We can share some air, but not a conversation.

London is a most peculiar place, and the way I see it, its only a model of what modern society has become.

Approximately 8 million people live in greater London and never have I been in a place where I have legitimately interacted with fewer people. Its quite amazing, really. The people of this city love their music - London is an epicenter for musical expression, so it makes sense. It is unbelievable the sheer number of individuals who walk about with earphones almost permanently attached to their persons. (I am guilty of this, I admit.) So, we walk down the streets, literally shoulder-to-shoulder, thousands commuting and there is no interaction. We climb into the subway cars, crammed as cattle, and still nothing. No speech, no laughter. Silence save for that emanating from our earphones...

Big cities are far lonelier places than they may seem. Though I am content with the arrangement, it saddens me on some level that this is what the world has become. Certainly this is not revolutionary thought - that technology and the near constant change of society has resulted in greater anomie. The things that ought to bring people together only serve to alienate.

We are more alone than ever before; six billion of us. Alone together. Once your attention is called to it, the fact becomes hard to ignore. And its only going to intensify, this lack of intimacy.