Trailers that Lead

The force of brevity Poe found in the 100 lines poem {The Philosophy of Composition) has many descendants in today's ADHD-icted World.
My favorite are (Movie) Trailers. And what a misnomers, by the way! They often are the best part of the show. Just like the commercials on TV, especially the Super Bawl-grade ones. Think about the message and appeal they compact in a minute or two. I can't remember a trailer that disappointed me, while most movies do. And how many movies I do go see because of a trailer! (Of course there is some survivorship bias of sorts here: I do not go see certain movies because of the negative expectation their trailer sets, those movies might have turned positive surprises.)
Some trailers do rise above the mass. And I am not the only one to appreciate these ultra-short features akin to very short stories, but actually a feat of editing. I remember hearing of people going to the movies just to see the trailer of one of the "Star Wars" episodes (probably a precursor to this one).
One of my all-time favorites is the original "Cloverfield" trailer, which started as abruptly as ever, haphazard and raw just like the hand-held camera video it purports to be.
I also enjoy crescendo-trailers, like the first version of "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" or "After Earth," which is playing in theaters as I write. The latter is also a crescendo in elocution and delivery. I took it as a hybrid between FDR's "fear of fear" and Scientology anti-psychiatry.
Who's trailing here?

robo/Poe/t

In Race Against the Machine Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee find another compelling explanation for the Great Joblessness we are currently navigating. Rather than in a deeply cyclical or deeply structural (loss of competitive edge leading to a Great Stagnation) quagmire, the US (and other developed economies) are facing a Great Restructuring: technological innovation is accelerating so fast that it has become increasingly hard for the workforce to keep up with machines. In the wake of the Great Recession, employers bought more machines, but did not rehire people. As a result, a whole swath of the traditional labor force is facing chronic unemployment. As the frontier of automation and artificial intelligence expands to absorbe occupations previously believed the prerogative of human hands and minds, acquisition of complex skills seems the only winning strategy. The authors are fundamentally techno-optimists and believe the "tools [of digital technology] are greatly improving our world and our lives, and will continue to do so. We are strong digital optimists, and we want to convince you to be one, too." In interviews, they point to areas where human creativity thrives.

Poetry, that exquisite form of human creation (even etymologically!), immediately comes to mind. Curiously, in 1846, Edgar Allan Poe published The Philosophy of Composition. A veritable recipe, qualitative and quantitative, as to the creation of a successful poem. Poe purports this to be a faithful description of his composition of The Raven. At times it reads like an algorithm, from the choice of topic, to length, to diction, "with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem." One would think it easy to code these prescriptions into a poetry-processor! And indeed automatic text generation was one of the first milestones of artificial intelligence (think ELIZA).
Not so fast! The subtext of this essay and of Poe's entire career left many of his contemporaries and modern literati perplex as to whether this was serious or one more hoax in the author's remarkable and inimitable repertoire. Poe as humbug, or Poe as reflexive and calculating poet?
No job for a roboPoeT!