Contactless.

We can now pay for our goods without any actual contact. Payments are made by wafting a piece of plastic, or a mobile phone, next to a reader and money is debited from your account. Not only does the card not have to touch the reader, this is contactless from a human perspective too. No pin keyed in. No signature. You don’t even have to hold the card.

You possibly also enter buildings, maybe at work or at home through a contactless fob waved adjacent to an access pad. Doors open automatically. No human pushing or pulling required.

Driverless cars are now being developed. No human steering, accelerating, braking.

Technologically speaking, it is as if our human contact with the world is being removed, bit by bit.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that the same can be true when we interact with each other. Often without physical or verbal contact we have an impact nonetheless.

Just being near someone can touch their lives.

Contactless.

But not without impact.