Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech?

Didn’t read the other posts, but almost all music is recorded in stereo so why wouldn’t you play it back that way and situate yourself in the position where it sounds best? Yes, there are speakers like Von Schweikert, Boenicke, etc. that use rear-firing tweets and others like Ohm and MBL that that are omnipoles, but as great as they may sound (and I do think they sound great) they’re the designer’s interpretation of the sound rather than how the engineer recorded it. And IMHO that’s perfectly fine and may even be preferable for many. For those who really care about optimal sound, having to sit in the sweet spot is a small price to pay and well worth the small effort. And I doubt even omnipole speakers, although they can sound very good off axis, sound as good or as balanced that way as opposed to sitting in the sweet spot. Hey, if you really care that much about walking around and getting the same (crappy) sound, just get a Bose Wave Radio and live it up.

No.

The young kids solo in their room on the phone for half of their lives.

And it's not even in stereo.

The flooding of the space in all directions is the Bose theory... 

not that it's necessarily a bad theory, executed properly.  But it's a sacrifice; many of us enjoy precise imaging, and good stereo speakers do convey a soundstage.

OP,

Yes, sorry… I completely misread your initial comments. My bad. I can tell you from my point of view that mono does not hold my interest…. for a second. I have a number of well recorded mono albums… I generally cannot get through two cuts. Admittedly I am using two speakers. 
 

On the other hand I know more than one person who are completely fine with it. I have no grand sweeping conclusions, other than stereo is absolutely essential for my enjoyment and three too many.

If I correctly understand what you're saying, JohnK, then, yeah.  I can easily imagine systems in the future comprised of 30 or 40 or more "sound generating devices" spread around the periphery of a space, maybe wall and/or ceiling mounted.  They'll be of some future technology that energizes the air to create the compression/rarefaction that is sound without the need for a moving mass driver.  The amplification electronics will precisely measure and deliver to each device the exact amount of energy and frequency to create real performance presence.  I'm not being glib as I don't doubt we'll get there and when we do people will look back at our chunky speakers with their moving diaphragms and dumb amps and pity us and wonder why we'd even try to reproduce music that way.  But we're not there yet.  Your point, though, is well taken.  Realistically there's no way two or three or 5 sources of sound can precisely and accurately pull it off.  But accurate and engaging are not necessarily the same thing so at least we can go for musically engaging while we wait for the future to arrive.  (of course tomorrow never comes, but we all know that)