I'll leave it to someone much more talented, with much more money invested in their photographic equipment, to capture the image (just wish it was in color):
It's not an original observation that so many people spend such a significant portion of their day - and their life - indoors. But then it occurred to me that the implications could be more deeply etched into the modern human psyche than we recognize. For instance, haven't our gods undergone the same shift as well? For generations, we revered prehistoric, animistic gods of sun, moon, earth, storm, etc. At some point, we made the leap to one God, who happens to reside indoors - churches, cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. What does that say about us?
So what kind of dystopic future could we be in for as a species? One of the best portrayals to my knowledge is Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. Just the title makes me shiver a little bit! There's a lot more at play than a devastating removal from nature, including overpopulation, a losing battle for jobs with robot labor - and the classic motivations for murder. But the most striking difference to today is the exclusively indoor lifestyle. It's been internalized to the point that most people scorn the outdoors; it's unthinkable for someone to walk even a mile outside of the massive Cities. (No commentary on indoor religion that I recall, though; is moving indoors the first step toward irrelevance for a god?) So different from today... but not by quite the degree you'd think at first.Asimov may or may not have this vision of the future right. If so, the worst of it is obviously centuries off. For now, today was one more reminder to value the time I do have to appreciate the outdoors.
Last thought - are there any good synonyms for "indoors"?
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