 The population lived isolated from one another in widely separated technological citadels, shunning all personal and physical contact, to the point that even families would only interact with each other via communication devices.Procreation became a matter of selecting compatible genetic material to be placed within an artificial womb called a "birthing matrix," the parents rarely even meeting in person and never touching one another.The planetary government grew deeply isolationist and forbade space exploration and communication with other worlds.