The Ultimate ‘closeup’

What few shortages there might be in our modern technological world, there is no shortage of literature describing society’s ills. Crowded urban centers, breakdowns in communication, environmental pollution, widespread boredom and loneliness rank high on the lists of those engaged in compiling our diseases. Close to the top of such lists is the staggering task of keeping abreast of new information, learning new approaches to just about everything. Suddenly we feel obsolete as we undergo constant re-training, lest we lose our jobs if not our minds.

None of these problems is to be underestimated, and yet the closer you look at each one, the more it seems that the overriding problem is one of human access-especially to people or things that control or affect our lives. With all the increase in population, it is paradoxical but true that the one resource we are running out of most rapidly is access to people. The optimistic prediction of twenty-five years ago that increased technology and population…