On the days of flying backpacks, self lacing shoes and music you can touch, some things never change.

‘Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

[…]

Among our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness. Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video communications for social contact.’

Full text, by Atul Gawande:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande