Poet Ponders the Digital

NXT Robot (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November  3, 2014 Deadline December 2014 Issue Robots for Home: Not Yet the Jetsons Rosie the robot maintained the Jetson household more than 50 years ago. To the disappoint of many of us who still enjoy the classic 1960s cartoon, Rosie remains science fiction. The only robots in our houses are round bumper cars that vacuum floors. The iRobot Roomba offers no witty banter and no sighs of exasperation. Growing up, I expected Twiki, the android that followed Buck Rogers about for no apparent reason, to become a reality. After all, Twiki didn’t do anything except carry a much smarter talking computer about his neck. Sadly, Rogers was stuck in the twenty-fifth century. All the good androids and robots seem to be way off in the future or in other galaxies. Although we have no Rosie, robots are on the rise. They build our cars, deliver medications, defuse bombs, explore planets and even perform surgeries. M...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley January 2, 2014 Deadline February 2014 Issue Rise of the Machines, Decline of the Workers Historians will compare the current economic shift to the Industrial Revolution, and that might understate the seismic change to our workforce. Our schools are not preparing students for the changes underway, a structural change in the workplace that rewards the “superstars” and leaves many others behind. Our private and public institutions are also failing to prepare, despite contributing to these changes. If you wonder why both the Occupy and Tea Party movements rose to prominence, you need only ask what unified them: a sense that our system is failing the middle class. How they protest and their solutions differ, but underlying the broad discontent lies a realization that economic imbalance is increasing. Although members of both groups believe that Wall Street was bailed out at the expense of Main Street, what many don’t realize is that the financial in...