A funnier thought occurred to me. On our trip here, Bruce wound us through the woods in such a crazy fashion, his attempt to disorient me, that he managed to drop me off closer to my home than we were when we began...

My wife and I exchanged a lightning-quick glance once we had taken it all in. The glance was undetected but conveyed a novels-worth of commentary. We continued our lavish praise for sparing us the task of cooking our own dinner that evening and the luxury of their wonderful company, while inside our heads we reflected upon each other's Blitzkrieg of opinions. Homemade!?

Who’s afraid of the big A.I.? I was involved in a discussion about artificial intelligence and automation at a Christmas party. The talk inevitably led to the discussion of jobs being taken over by robots. And as we discussed the various occupations which we felt might be safe versus those we thought were endangered, or soon would be, a chill ran up my arm as I realized I already work for a robot.  The conversation continued as a dull murmur in the background while I pondered the meaning of this revelation. Over the past year I have noticed a flurry of articles pertaining to artificial intelligence, automation, robotics and their…

...along came this weird device.  It had no keyboard, no wires, just a screen.  This was followed in the Spring of 2010 by a letter from Steve Jobs slamming Flash in an open letter to the world.  This was followed by the headlines, "Flash is Dead!".  I remember firing up my computer that morning, seeing the headlines and just staring at the screen, frozen.  I was in shock.