My sweet jellybean,

We have really created a culture of agorophobics. A little over a hundred years ago, people lived in a village and would encounter only a limited number of people. Then the Industrial Age. No longer general stores and agricultural communities and doctors on house calls.

Quickly, a culture of factories, industrialization, electricity, roads, cars, travel, crime. The world opened up. The urban sprawl. Subways. Anonymous people. Mega-malls. Interior spaces designed like casinos to hold people in, populated with more than a village of strangers. But the irony is we have also turned into ourselves and technology helps us hide.

100 channels of simulated life. We can pursue our consumerism online and have people bring us anything we want. Groceries, music, entertainment, sex enhancement pills, pizza, brought straight to our door.

And we can pursue simulated relationships online. Chatboards. Email. And the most basic and carnal of human relationships, simulated sex too.

The village exploded, grew exponentially, and inside the vast urban honeycomb, the cowering urbanites can still hide and the agoraphobics have more resources, have a much wider support structure, than ever before.

SS