We are not as strong as technology's pull.

If behind popular fascination with Freudian theory there was a nervous, often guilty preoccupation with the self as sexual, behind increasing interest in computational interpretations of mind is an equally nervous preoccupation with the self as machine.

We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.

In the area of robotics and in the area of connectivity, technology is offering us things that we are vulnerable to - and we have to have a better response than a shrug.

Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.

If we don't teach kids how to be alone, they will end up only lonely.