Notwithstanding your condescending tone of stating something obvious to me as a question, I’m not talking about the pandemic at all. The majority of communication between people is electronic now, messaging, email, the Internet as a whole. You have to go back nearly a couple of decades really to see teenagers (or many adults) who are not glued to their phones and primarily communicating in a digital way. And with regards to the OP, you certainly can’t replicate an intellectual coffeehouse digitally.

It’s unfortunate, because the raw improvised social interaction of recent eras past is forever gone, and the newer generations will never know what they missed.

I'm being condescending because your point is just another repackaging of the classic "back in my day" argument. People these days use electronic devices to communicate, yes, but they also meet face-to-face, and go grab lunch and coffee just like people used to in the past. There's nothing especially "raw" or "improvised" about social interaction in the past.

It seems you think a differing point of view in a debate must be delivered via condescension, which is unfortunate.