ABSTRACT
In Isaac Asimov’s robot novel, The Naked Sun, people can’t stand being in the same room with one another. They hate being face-to-face. In the chilling story that takes place on the futuristic planet of Solaris, where actual personal contact creeps everyone out, Solarians much prefer to be in touch virtually, “viewing” one another on wall-to-wall image panels, much like today’s teleprescence screens. While Earthlings are not yet Solarians, in our own sci-fi daily home and work life, we now happily communicate at a distance, even playing Scrabble with strangers on our hand-held devices with delight.
