I just wonder what happens when we remove the chance encounters, the slips of words, the accidental bumps into someone on the subway. What happens when experience is so engineered that we never have the possibility to lock eyes with someone and just feel, Wow!
We mostly have achieved that level already. It's found in vertical cities, in skyscrapers where thousands and thousands of people live and most even don't know or have ever had a proper chat with their neighbor.
It's a sad state and it's going to get only worse. Until the day we see a new rise in public locals, pubs where mobile phones are not welcome. If in some years those social meeting places still exist because work has continued to bite into ever larger chunks of our days.
Yes, it is almost there isn't it ;) We are already brainwashed, programmed controlled. People want to be free while they sit and do exactly what they have been taught to do.
When mobile phones became popular around the Millenium turn I was lucky to be in the Netherlands, in Utrecht particularly. There were two higher level bistros who had a no mobile phone policy, with laminated signs against the wall. Each time a phone was heard ringing the whole waiting staff would jump up and try to locate the phone, it was pretty fun to see. For most waiters it was their guilty pleasure of the day.
While it would most definitely cause a ruckus on social media - what doesn't nowadays - just like there's always more new coffee shops opening without WiFi, I predict that we will ever more find such locals again. Because they want people to have a nice and social time, not a time dictated by a gadget. It may even be socially owned guesthouses (pubs with shared ownership by a large base of their patrons).
If I remember Utrecht had the first UBI test too.
I think it will get to a point where at least groups of friends will outlaw phones. I don't like meeting some friends anymore as they are always on a phone. Soon it might be like smoking. Once it was 'connecting people' but now the smokers are ostracised.