Wasn’t sure whether to include this as an entry for Fathers’ Day under the category of Families or under Big Tech: Big Lie or Promise. Under that heading this reminds me of a classmate’s description of Death as an enormous shroud “that enfolds all peoples” (Is. 25:7, NIV). Or for you techies, the government’s Carnivore internet surveillance tool.
I have used the following illustration of the Adams family, father and son presidents. Since I can’t find the sermon, the blog post, Book Note, or little scrap of paper I would of used pre-2002, I resorted to the internet. This 2010 post by Glenn Wiebe says the illustration is about John Quincy Adam’s son, Charles, and his son Brooks (https://historytech.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/finished-a-day-of-teaching-a-day-wasted/). Since AI confirmed this, it must be true.
Brooks writes in his diary, “Went fishing with my father today, the most glorious day of my life.” Glenn, also known as “The History Tech”, says Brooks thought about that day for the next 30 years. Then he decided to compare what his father, also known to be a faithful diarist, wrote about that day. His father, Charles, had written, “Went fishing with my son, a wasted day.”
The History Tech allows that the father could’ve met that they, catching no fish, had come home empty-handed, but admits it was probably more what every father knows. If so, and this is from me not Glenn, it’s the “No one puts on their tombstone: Wish I had spent more time at the office.”
Give a listen to this song. This is what Charles’, as Lincoln might say, better angels would’ve realized:
I don’t remember hearing this song till one of my son’s on a three day trip put into our 1990 van’s cassette player what would have been called a “mix tape”. I never would’ve thought any day spent with my kids was “wasted”, but it brought home to me just how special they were to them. The rest of this song played out in this boy’s life and I can’t hear this son without tearing up. However, I can’t think of this being more applicable, in my mind anyway, to the Shroud Death or the carnivorous internet without, to coin a phrase, “fearing up”.
I have never found a sermon, blog post, or illustration, by searching the internet, but as I mentioned about 15 years ago, I have typed in all the illustrations I used in a sermon, it was between 3 and 6, and everyone of them was right there on the omnivorous internet and it enveloped me like a shroud.
One of my sons set up one of my computers to have no AI Google searches because I knew it was influencing my searches. The other one has them and has Gmail smart features turned on. This checks spelling and grammar automatically – that’s the reason I want them on, but the ever-present, ever-hungry AI is there too. I am in a conundrum. I am genuinely embarrassed by the spelling and grammar errors I post in blogs and can send in emails no matter how many times I reread them. I once read that proofreaders do their work by “reading” backwards. Right, I don’t do so good reading forward.
Well son of mix tape fame, (By the way the Internet tells me that my compunction to write mixed tape and not mix tape is an indication of the era, mine, when this form of music sharing started.) tells me that in all his email communication he closes with a line saying that the misspellings and grammar errors prove that this was not AI assisted or written. Genuis. (I think I have set up something similar, but I don’t know how to confirm this.)
All my sons are fathers now, the mantel is passed. I gladly let it slip from my shoulders. I seldom had a plan for raising my kids other than “1. Go to church” and “2. Go to work”. I am much more comfortable confronting the Shroud of Death than the Carnivore of the Internet because while Christ swallowed Death the Devourer, the Carnivore continues to eat.
I don’t see or know how, but I hope my children can see that the AI Carnivore that I regard as unstoppable is more easily annulled, defanged, defeated than Death. It doesn’t take going to hell, death, and grave as The “Sinner” to do that. It’s just a matter of unplugging it – or not plugging into it. Later generations seem much more adept at doing, or not doing that than mine, or at least me.
