This disconnect between technological promise and everyday reality affects millions of users daily, yet it's rarely discussed in the breathless coverage of the latest AI breakthroughs or smart home innovations. Perhaps it's time we started measuring progress not by what's possible in controlled demonstrations, but by what actually works when we need it most.

AI is coming, with all its demands on hardware and software to accommodate it, even "securely remote", famous last words, and I never asked for it, nor do I need it. There's a certain human satisfaction in laying out tasks and checking them off.

And solving problems, challenging the brain, like practicing piano, compared to just listening. Keep this old mind very sharp (pun unintended)

Many of the examples given, of AI, and technology in general, are simple tasks, made extremely complex, flakey and dangerous, that people used to do. Think: getting a ride, shopping.

Call me when AI can replace some damaged door molding and install new replacement window blinds.

In my misspent youth, I would supplement my education by buying used copies of Scientific American at a bookstore on Huntington Ave. in Boston. One article stuck in my mind. Joey, "A Mechanical Boy" [0] Original source [1]. PDF.

Apparently autistic, Joey mechanized his entire life until he recovered. I learned to mechanize just what was needed.

> One last detail and this fragment of Joey's story has been told. When Joey was 12, he made a Boat for our Memorial Day parade. It carried the slogan: "Feelings are more important than anything under the sun." Feelings, Joey had learned, are what make for humanity; their absence, for a mechanical existence. With this knowledge Joey entered the human condition.

I vaguely remember the clerk who kindly asked if I was going to buy that stack of magazines or was just making a mess. A human moment.

[0] https://blogs.uoregon.edu/autismhistoryproject/archive/bruno...

[1] https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/d/16656...