Thus The Guardian today. “Helping elderly people to use the Internet is a good idea,” elaborates the newspaper. “But let’s not mistake broadband connections for social ones.” Apparently, loneliness is a massive problem for the elderly. Recent research shows that a third of them is plagued by loneliness. Internet is surely a good thing, concludes the article, but human contact, human warmth, and human kindness are still irreplaceable. Having read these wise words, I could not but think of my own generation. The babyboomers will soon become the loneliest people on the planet. And there are so many of them around the globe. An unintended consequence of World War II, the bug has to do with political economy, as it were. To wit, mass loneliness is the ultimate price of human inability to resolve economic problems peacefully. Returning to babyboomers, there will be technological solutions to their plight aplenty, but none of them will amount to much. Come to think of it, chemical solutions may be the only exception to this global conundrum. In particular, the pharmaceutical industry may well thrive first with mass depression and then with mass suicide.