When I was growing up, our great worries were iron-poor blood, ineffective laundering and imminent nuclear annihilation. Fortunately Wall Street and our schools had the answer for each: a clever portmanteau of Geriatric and Tolerate, Geritol, would energize your tired hemoglobin; Wisk detergent was mighty enough to defeat the obnoxious chants of “ring around the collar” that parrots, suitcases, carnies and mothers had the habit of bursting into; and covering our heads with our hands would let us survive any dirty commie attack.  

The sophisticated, literate, talented and astonishingly attractive people fictionalized on “Mad Men” spent their sophisticated, literate, talented souls in their most productive years terrorizing housewives into fearing their homes may suffer from hous-itosis, or that their husbands didn’t really love their coffee, probably because of the wives’ untreated dandruff which was harder to brush off than nuclear fallout was. If anyone’s wondering why second-wave feminism arose.

Change itself seemed different. People wrote bestsellers on the speed of it, worrying that because everything we knew was constantly being upgraded as we hurtled through time, our minds couldn’t handle it.  Worldwide best-selling author Alvin Toffler wrote, “Accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from shattering stress and disorientation.” 

His dire warnings were the social equivalent of the fear women’s wombs would fly from their bodies if women went over 20 miles an hour. Think of the mess in the train carriages splattered from the flying uteri! Think of the cleanup, years before Wisk! 

Now, having hurtled all the way into the next century with our reproductive organs where evolution located them, (anatomical zoning described by Neil DeGrasse Tyson as putting the amusement park next to the sewage treatment plant), we are no more psychologically disconcerted by change than anyone who realizes the world they knew before they had receding gums will never come back. 

Grumbling about change has been around every bit as long as change itself. 

And much of the future is rather fun.

Even our current education secretary, formerly of the WWF (the wrestling one, not the conservation one),  believes that schools using “A-One” can significantly improve our education system.  Students everywhere would probably cheer on the addition of actual flavor to their school-based meals, but perhaps she meant artificial intelligence, AI.  She herself is demonstrating that humankind needs some work.

AI and I had an interesting encounter recently, when a friend’s Facebook post sent me to ChatGPT to ask it to make some cartoon avatars of myself, mentioning that I wrote a humor column.  (Humor? you ask, sarcastically.  In whose book? Well, not yours, but that’s OK; I’m used to getting those confused furrowed-brow looks while the frowner is simultaneously backing away. I have offspring.)  

ChatGPT first created a manga-esque warrior me,  spouting word bubbles with insultingly lame dad jokes. After being rebuked, it made another, less violent image  This avatar’s word bubbles were completely lacking in wit, e.g. “Good help is hard to avoid” and  “You’re nt wrong.” Hilarious, eh?   When asked to try again, ChatGPT didn’t even bother with words. This time, it gave me hands of a size a certain person occupying the office of president could only wish he had. 

Sigh. 

But when I asked it to describe my column, this AI was flattering! Called me insightful and funny. I think I like it after all. Darn thing might make a good Secretary of Education.