Once Upon a Time in America

B.C., before Covid, before 9/11, There was an "American Dream"narrative many believed. That dream followed Americans from childhood all the way through adulthood then well into the "Golden Years." We lived on a consistent message that these United States of America held a certain promise that was guaranteed by the words written into the U.S. Constitution before we were born. Before now, we took that promise for granted and literally, assuming it would stand the test of time for all time, or at the very least, for our own lifetime!

In 2016, on a frigid, snowy Sunday morning in an historic, New England church where many sermons and hymns had been heard before, a retired minister stood up unapologetically to say that although it had not been his practice to speak politically from the pulpit, this day he knew he had to. He was about to send up a warning flare like the night the Titanic did so. In vain.

In the 1960's, his mother had been an activist. She had spoken up and worked against those who tried to oppress all others who belonged to the "protected" classes* under the Constitution. She had taught her son to speak up and that brought him to where he was standing on this day before a small congregation in one of the poorest, most depressed cities in the State of Massachusetts. He told us that when his mother passed away, he discovered a full dossier of her activism assembled by the FBI. He, too, as a young man had been documented for his affiliations with his mother! That didn't stop either one of them from speaking up, out, and outloud about the injustices many Americans suffered on a daily basis.

Their words and actions, along with many others, were instrumental in making it possible for everyone to vote, regardles; making it possible for women to receive safe, legal reproductive health care in their own community; making it possible to find asylum from brutal dictators elsewhere; making it possible to become an educated citizen through local schools; making it possible to breathe clean air and drink safe water; making it possible to attend synagogue or mosque or church without fear. This was the short list of possibilities that the minister juxtaposed against the long list of Presidential candidates that Spring in 2016. Then, this retired minister living out his Golden Years, spoke like a prophet that morning:

"We thought we had addressed and resolved many of the wrongs. We were the ones who were wrong! All the hatred, all the prejudice, all the evil, had just gone into a Pandora's Box. Now, in 2016, someone has the key and is about to open it in the next four years."

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By 2024, those prophetic words were written into our American story. We American citizens were faced with this truth that it soon might be too late to speak freely, to write freely, to read freely, and to vote freely, which is becoming as precarious as in dictatorships that so many flee against all odds.

In 2025 , NO KINGS! became a rallying cry when an estimated 7 million people across the U.S. decided it was time to do something. Political scientist tell us that a critical mass is required to stop a regime from carrying on. We must reach 11 million people to successfully stop the government bent on stopping us.

Ten years after that minister's warning the truth has come to bear down on us in ways we could never have imagined.

In 2026: The future is now! Our collective hands and voices are needed to say loudly and clearly that we do not want to live in a country without hope for a better life for everyone---A country without possibilities. We want to live in a country where once upon a time the promise of an American Dream might still come true.

In the end, Pandora did open that box unleashing all that was evil on an innocent world. But, the preacher told us not to forget that inside the box, there was also Hope!

Hope is the key that opens and protects what we hold dear and dare to dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxb2F0l5INI

*PROTECTED CLASSES:  race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information (including family medical history). www.eeoc.gov

AI and I . . .

Last week's blog* generated more comments than any other of the 142 that I have written since I launched this missive into cyberspace exactly three years ago on June 9, 2023!**

At the time, I felt a bit nervous about putting my own thoughts into words that might come back at me. I thought the crazies might latch onto it or the cyber police would follow me. I tried to guard against both by selectively sending it through a secure email list. I asked readers not to repost on social media where I am not an active participant. My wishes, to the best of my knowledge, have been respected.

These weekly blog posts spread without social platforms by "word of mouth", if you will. Each reader who "shared" within her own select circle enlarged the readership way beyond Florida within the U.S. to Canada to the UK and Europe and as far away as Australia and New Zealand ---WITHOUT social media! Of course, the marketeers remind me all the time how many more people the blog would reach if only I turned to platforms such as theirs.

In early days, I sat down and sorted my thoughts without asking AI to write for me. Three years on, by human standards, is light years for technology when one sneeze sets off the next and the next all around the globe like an AI pandemic! That's what we have to look forward to.

When I began to write today, I looked back to my original blog and discovered serendipitously that this is the third anniversary of my first blog---how amazing! AI will never capture the meaning of a serendipitous moment like that one, offering only a definition: "Positive Value: The accidental discovery is beneficial, useful, or delightful".

Dry explanation of a purely delightful discovery demonstrating the many connections that are ordered not in cyberspace, but in the larger Universe---larger than the human mind or AI can fathom. There is no hope for human beings if we give up on the big U in favor of AI.

I am not the Pope, big P or small p, but I think his message points to the existential threat that looms if we humans acquiesce to the data world instead. Do we dare give up our precious gifts for a quicker answer, or an abundance of information, to save time to "live life" as one reader wrote?

In an effort to make work or school more efficient is it worth sacrificing serendipitous discoveries? Old school thinking was by-and-large independent thinking. I remember a few of my best teachers made room for experiences not in the text book, but by opening up possibilities. If the answers come with the keystroke what are the chances for an eye-opening, mind-blowing moment when the Universe shows itself? Venus and Jupiter in the night sky cannot measure up on a blue screen.

Everyone reading this, young and old, might turn toThe Three Princes of Serendip,*** an ancient tale of three brothers whose father, the King, sends them out into the world to have real time experiences in addition to what their tutors taught so they will come to see first-hand how serendipity adds a whole other dimension--- that AI cannot and will not, no matter what.

By now, you know that it was I and not AI writing each and every one of the blog posts over the past three years including last week's. Your comments inspired me to say more. Sharing within your sphere of the Universe helps to spread some genuine thoughts which may generate other ideas. Wouldn't you agree?

*https://www.marielaureauthor.com/post/thanks-a-lot-ai

**https://www.marielaureauthor.com/post/your-title-what-s-your-blog-about 

Thanks A lot, AI!

I had no idea why suddenly, out of the blue, without any warning and quite unwelcome, this week Google unleashed AI (artificial intelligence) on my Google phone! The changes were not subtle. There was no introduction. No explanation. It just happened when my phone began making all my decisions regardless of the settings I had decided on months ago.

Let's be clear, I am not a techie, nor do I understand most of what's involved in this looming change to the world with a new "friendly" voice in the room (as if Alexis wasn't enough). Regardless of my limited knowledge, I have skills that I have honed over decades since the good nuns taught me how to write a compound sentence--or how to look up a word in the dictionary for correct spelling and pronunciation and most importantly for the definition. These learned skills got me through a regional spelling bee championship at age 14! I could spell anything back then. But now, without so much as a moment to think about the spelling rules that were drilled into me ---"I before E except after C"---the genius living in my computer self corrects--me! Ok, I can handle that one even if I do not like it one bit. But, Google has gone way passed that now. Here is one story to illustrate:

At the airport in Orlando, I "asked my phone" aka AI: Which terminal is Virgin Atlantic? I was standing in terminal A at the time where Virgin Atlantic was supposed to be, but I could not find it. AI said: Virgin Atlantic has moved to Terminal C effective YESTERDAY! I confirmed this with an attendant behind a desk. The tram took me to C where V.A. was nowhere to be found. The attendant checked his Google tablet: V.A. has NOT moved to C---yet. They were supposed to, but now they are in B. The tram took me back from where I had come. I asked the next information person holding a tablet: "Where is V.A.?" She replied: "That's the question of the day"! "What's the answer"? I said as politely as I could.

She opened up her Google AI phone and showed me a photo of V.A.'s new "pop up" location! A major airline on which I would fly for nine hours across the Atlantic Ocean was now a "pop up" that AI had misdirected me to when I first queried Google. Two major errors in an airport the size of Disney world caused passengers with rolling suitcases to jump on an off trams and walk endless corridors in search of a human to ask: Where the hell is my airline...please?

Two things that stood out in my growing frustration: AI lied to me! V.A. failed to communicate with me. The consequences of such inadequacies leave me cold. I want a warm-blooded person not a robot to answer my questions. Is that too much to ask? Today, the same query to AI produces this information: Virgin Atlantic plans to eventually move to Terminal C and will confirm a new date once CBP approval is secured". Thanks a lot AI and V.A.

What's next? While my phone wants to change any setting I set regardless of my desire to do damage control from knowing more than necessary from the world at large, I am bombarded with unwanted "options", usually when I need to use my phone to call an actual person.

I thought I was a wiser consumer for having gone to Google over Apple. I liked that I could be somewhat out of the main-main stream of the tech world, making my own choices and decisions to opt out of many unwanted and unnecessary data-driven marketing schemes.

This week that changed drastically when Google announced---boasted---that it had "rolled out massive, historic changes to search and its AI platforms . . . Information Agents can now setup, 24/7 background agents to track specific data, research topics, and synthesize alerts on a continuous basis". Good luck to folks like me, of any age, including my grandkids who are trying to figure out how to untether themselves from their cell phones.

Simultaneously with this Google pronouncement, Pope Leo wrote that AI must be "disarmed" i.e., "freed from corporate monopolies"--- Hello Google: What did Pope Leo say about AI? https://youtu.be/qZ0Tt49KDXk?si=aeSIGq8sN24Rg00t

In conclusion, the question for you the reader is: Did I write this blog or did AI?