We are witnessing the birth of the term "pre-times" you often see in dystopian sci-fi.

E.M. Forster called it 117 years ago, in 1909, in The Machine Stops.

In this dystopian sci-fi novel, E.M. Forster depicts modern life for humans: detached from each other, living in solitary silos above the barren Earth below, which has become an infertile wasteland of itself, and only ever connecting from their rooms by projecting “holograms” of themselves to interact remotely with one another. Spoiler alert: the machine experiences a catastrophic failure event.