I don’t like to be called old. Older is OK. I don’t mind retiree. I don’t mind being called a senior or even mature. I suspect mature is debatable by some. In recent years I have wondered about the term artificial intelligence. What does it mean anyway?
Seniors worry that sooner rather than later we may not be able to drive. Artificial intelligence may solve that for us. We will be able to sit behind the wheel and a machine will drive us. That will allow us to really not pay attention to the road and dream out our final years.
When we seniors attend meetings, we like being given a lot of paper hand-outs with words on them. And when the hand-outs are of different pastel colors we experience joy through our clouded eyes. We don’t understand ‘tablets’ and rear-end smart phones that only fit in our back pockets. We remember tablets as blank sheets of paper with lines on them. We don’t understand how remote meetings work. We can’t see each other. And the young call that communication.
We, as senior labor retirees, tend to challenge the new ways of doing things. We think it should be the way we did things. We communicated before the days of cell phones. We had face to face union meetings where we fined members for not showing up…or so I have heard. We always voted for candidates who helped labor reach their goals. We organized and adopted new members and taught them the ‘ropes’. The BAs and Reps visited workers and when a member died we sat and mourned in their living room with the rest of the family
Today is different but can be close to the same as the past. I have been ‘door knocking’ for labor in the South East. We visit only union members and their households. I use guidance called the mini-LAN or VAN. I don’t need a pencil, just my forefinger. I carry a labor provided thin, bright screened device that is about half the size of our old lined tablets. It is actually called a tablet I think. But never mind what it is called. Here is how it works:
- The big deal is you don’t have a lot of paper turf lists, scripts or instructions blowing down the street. No paper maps. No script paper… unless you want. Just use your finger, tap a location and up comes a name, address and location. Slide your finger and all the pertinent data like age, union etc. come up. The reason for visiting is the election of Tim Walz and Tina Smith. Our message is very doable. And finally we leave an AFL-CIO flyer. Easy peasy. Tap it again and off to the next location, address and name.
We labor seniors talked a lot about the failed 2016 election and how we must do things differently. Somebody listened. What could be easier? Drop the word “artificial”. This is using “intelligence”.
Respectfully and with the kindest of regards,
Bruce Yernberg