The Robot in the Tea Parlor: Poems of Life in the Digital Age

This brief collection of poems present different but connected glimpses and deep feelings on the multiple impacts of technology, and digital innovations on human life and our planet. It presents a view of robotics as our lives are impacted by drones, mass surveillance programs, and Machiavellian modern tools of persuasion and a growing willingness to sacrifice privacy and traditional freedoms for a promise of national security and expansion of our volatile economy. The Robot in the Tea Parlor is an effort to search our soul and conscience for ways to understand and cope with the myriad of problems impacting us. Most of the poems represent a distillation of dreams remembered, reflections on personal experiences, and views of media events related to technology, such as drones (UAVs) and artificial intelligence devices. Will humanity evolve to overcome wars and blanket surveillance, or will we succumb to a high-tech Orwellian dictatorship/Brave New World? This is the underlying question for which we seek answers.