Slow and sinking / the room to be human

It’s the night before Chinese New Year. After the reunion dinner, we bike home in the dark and cool, but this time, my mind is elsewhere. I feel unsettled. I can’t shake the images I saw on the TV screen from my mind—the scores of robots dancing/doing martial arts moves in unison, the AI-generated video graphics that puzzled me for a moment as I tried to discern if what I saw was actually real, or…