Dad and the Twenty-First Century

Family photo from GE Newsletter circa 1950s

Today is Father’s Day. My dad and mom had eight children. He went to work at a factory every day and he managed to feed and clothe all 10 of us. We were probably considered poor, but we didn’t feel poor. We had a home in a community with lots of children and almost all the neighborhood children ended up at our house at one time or another. We were all outside all day when we weren’t in school, if the weather was cooperative. Even in winter, Dad made an ice rink in the backyard and everyone came to skate. Elon Musk would have found my dad’s fecundity admirable. While my mom was not submissive, she was what would be described today as a “trad” wife. It was her goal to be a wife and a mom, and she was a good one.

Dad had a few common interests with each of us. He and I loved to watch storms come in and we both loved science fiction. We all drank in Dad’s handyman skills. He could fix just about anything.

But what would my dad think about 2026? What would he think about DOGE dismantling our government without any plan except erasing DEI? What would he think about AI? As a lover of sci-fi, he might have thought, “cool”, at first. Would he love that to make AI work someone had to eat the internet whole and then keep all the profits for himself? Would he think it worthwhile that every corporation had to create its own version of AI? My dad collected data for GE in their master oscillator room. He was a fan of data. Would he want to see data centers cropping up everywhere, replicating services unnecessarily out of greed and destroying America’s natural beauty? Dad loved nature’s beauty and took all of us to a park whenever he could, and if the station wagon was running.

Could my father support ten people with one salary in today’s economy? Even in the late 50s and early 60’s dad had to limit how much milk we could drink, buy day old bread, and discounted can foods that had lost their labels. Perhaps he would earn more money in this century, but I doubt it. He was brilliant, but not on paper. He dropped out of school in 8th grade to take care of his mom and dad. He taught himself calculus, but without a high school diploma he had to rely on his years of work experience. Technology finally surpassed his store of practical knowledge. TVs began to use solid state technology and all the old TV tubes in the basement became obsolete. Then GE left our town. Dad would have loved computers, but by the time some of his grandchildren had a Commodore 64, he showed no interest. Would he love that AI was going to kick people out of work? Rhetorical question.

I try to imagine my dad with a cell phone. It would have been a great help to coordinate events within a busy family. He never saw cell phones, just the same landline hanging on the dining room wall with the long cord that reached everywhere. One phone for ten people and all our friends. Sometimes I miss that old landline because it worked even when the lights went out and you always felt the security of that connection.

Dad and I had an optimistic outlook on what the future would bring. I think he would be very disappointed, as I am, to see that we are losing far more than we are getting. Mom would just say, don’t worry honey to whoever needed to hear it. I am not as sanguine as my mom, and I wonder if she would still be able to ignore the entire world outside of the family. She would probably have to go to work. That would have changed everything.