[nicboobees]

God forbid we should actually interact with our fellow humans.

I guess the next step down this path is to replace waiters etc with robots - again reducing the amount you have to interact with other humans.

When I get in a taxi, I actually enjoy talking to the driver, asking about the local area, the news, and making both our days a tiny bit more interesting.

As the world population increases, and cities grow and grow I can only see this getting worse - millions of humans bunched together, and all of them scared to talk to each other.

(In case you hadn't guessed I'm not a city person)

[eropple]

I find that it depends quite heavily on the city in question. I live in Boston, where a lot of folks do generally keep to themselves, and it does suck sometimes (if I could get a good gig in a city that wasn't worse--hello, New York, hello, San Francisco--I would), but there are plenty of cities that emphatically don't feel this way. Portland, Oregon comes to mind. Both Dublin and Galway, in Ireland, too.