I don't know about the homebound human blobs thing, but I can easily see some of the ideas that were presented in films like 'Demolition Man' come into being, like the virtual reality masks they used to have sex, eliminating the majority of the threat of std's. Probably not in the very near future, but based on the way technology in the virtual reality realm is developing, a similar concept is doubtfully very far off. "Will they eventually reach a point where even interacting through their 3D avatars is too much effort and they simply exist by watching the avatars and "live" through their cybernetic proxies?" Some people are almost like that now. I've played online games for 6 or 7 years now, and some of them were so addicting that I pretty much lost interest in anything going on in the real world. working was a pain because it took away from my game time. That's just sad. Then I have a cousin who nearly went to prison for deserting the navy because he got so addicted to an online game that he started skipping work for days at a time. Even now, I spend more time online than I do in the real world. My family pokes fun, when they see me leave my room, they joke that I've actually unplugged for five minutes.