Robots want to love us because the field of artificial intelligence has programmed robots to say they want to love us.

It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.

What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

We're too busy communicating to think, too busy communicating to connect, and sometimes we're too busy communicating to create. This is true for individuals and also true for organizations.

Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.

What I'm seeing is a generation that says consistently, 'I would rather text than make a telephone call.' Why? It's less risky. I can just get the information out there. I don't have to get all involved; it's more efficient. I would rather text than see somebody face to face.