There's some upper limit on what you can accomplish as a sequestered lone-wolf genius. I don't deny that people with such working styles have made impressive contributions, but the bar for "innovation" is rapidly climbing and will soon surpass what anyone can do in isolation. That's a pretty normal thing to happen as a field matures.
The detached, contractor-like model where you only need to communicate to receive well-defined tasks and deliver well-defined output has substantial benefits for fulfilling many business needs. If I worked on a software assembly line, there would be no need for communication outside the ticketing system. But when you're doing something new, not yet understood, and bigger than one person, you're going to need to talk about it. (Obviously you can still do that with phone/videoconferencing, but the friction it imposes on conversation is real).