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I must mention my favourite sci-fi short story, "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster[0]. It is from 1909 and is chillingly prescient.

Essentially, a machine provides all necessities of life in a persons' pod, so they need never leave. People spend their time making essentially YouTube videos about their opinions. Nobody cares about facts or knowledge anymore. Spoiler, it doesn't end well for them.

[0] http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

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Thanks for sharing this -- I happened upon this HN thread at just after midnight, and decided to read the story before going to bed. It's amazing, giving when it was written, and finding it like this reminded me about how I used to find things on the internet (having just read through the Ask HN comments[1] on what t'internet used to be like :) )

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18897109

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