It’s been quite a year, and I only have to scratch the surface to explain why.

My job had a 180 or is it 360?;-)-degree change as KTVZ focuses on streaming video, a big piece of the future of local TV news.

And some 40 years after I wrote about the mystery of Pacific University’s long-missing mascot, the Boxer, for our alumni magazine, they brought the newly found original Boxer to Bend for a special alumni gathering.

Yep, PU in Frosty Grave… I mean Forest Grove is where I met my wonderful future wife Deb as freshmen over FIFTY years ago.

That’s us! In What a long, wonderful (and sure, painful, whose life avoids that entirely?!) trip it’s been! She’s a saint, and I’m a jokester – she’s heard them all – and never-ending story/joke-teller (and yeah, she’s heard them all, too. A saint!)

But back to the present – and all the uncertainties of the future. I believe I was meant to write this – and without AI’s help, at least for now. And you were meant to read it!

It’s hard to avoid viewing the world these days if not through the lens, then through the prism of AI. (A mirage? A mirror, as a great book called “AI Wrote This Book” states? Pick your favorite metaphor!)

On the threshold of … who knows?

Yes, we are all pushed and alerted to distraction, needing a chainsaw to cut through the noise, the AI-fueled pinnacle of our information overload. No amount of “upskilling” (a word guy, but NOT a fan of such terms;-) will avoid that entirely.

We are at the threshold of the Unknown … what it will be, even the most expert experts have to admit we don’t really know. So we desperately seek clues from every test, every model, every advancement from the “chatbot” explosion to agentic actors on our behalf to… well, we all picture robots, right?

But my point with the name and purpose of this blog is, like the best Reddit subreddits, to make you feel a bit less alone if you spend so much time pondering how AI will affect YOU, and debating and arguing and imagining, yes even dreaming – you don’t spend a lot of time with… “prompt engineering.”

The very label screams HOMEWORK. Who wants to go back to those days? (I don’t mean ‘home work’ – COVID put me there, with all the tradeoffs we are all so familiar with – flexibility and isolation and … fear/worry about the future. Then hybrid, like so many – and now, back to the office;-)

Reasons, excuses – or a mix

A reason vs. an excuse is in the eye of the judge, as in judgment calls.

But until AI isn’t thought of as a separate servant, a genie in a chatbot, but is just built into … well, everything, pretty much … I am, like so many, not running after IT, but waiting until it gets to ME in some major fashion.

I mentioned that I now spend most of my time traveling our networks, looking for the next thing to stream. There are 100 or so little steps – much like producing our news shows, or the reporters’ multi-platform duties. They don’t seem to lend themselves well to asking AI to do the heavy lifting for us.

It’s like reading some great self-helpers who talk of making conscious decisions to format our days, when in our business – and maybe like yours – we ride the daily tide – in our case, the tide of news – and never know what the next minute, hour or day may bring to shift our entire day’s plans.

It’s not like using trainable AI to schedule a meeting or send an email. (I do use Grammarly, which catches most – but not all – of my inevitable typos.)

So the best reason/excuse really is, why dive into a pool when you have no idea how deep it is – bottomless, it appears – or what lies beneath the surface? Or maybe a better analogy is a turbulent, rushing river. Who dares jump in, unless they absolutely have to – with a life jacket, for sure!

The Constant Boggle the Mind Factor

I’ve referred to myself as a guilt-driven, paranoid over-thinker, who even over-thinks about over-thinking.

Such is life. For me, anyway. You?

So when every day you are reading things on any topic – much less AI – that is mind-blowing, and changes your whole view of where it’s at and where it’s going and what it’s doing to us, for better and-or worse – how do you take a study course that doesn’t feel stuck in place?

I’ve been taking Conor Grennan’s great course on Generative AI for Professionals and he does a wonderful bite-sized-chunks, one-on-one master class video in how to approach that always challenging mindset change about how to use your favorite AI chatbot to do amazing things.

And now, as I work in a customized WordPress back-end to our wonderful website, I’m also reminding myself with this new blog how to make it as “comfy home-like” in user interface (ah, UX) – as the one that’s my ‘day job.’ (Until breaking news makes it more than a day job;-)

So I’m not averse to learning new things! This “old dog” (who turns 70 next April 1st, no foolin’!) can learn – and livestream – new tricks.

But it’s still far more fun to fire up my trusty Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, go to the digital bookstore, search AI-related books, sort newest to oldest, scroll past DOZENS of ‘pre-order’ books not out yet and find the latest ones that just published… today, this week!

Absolutely fascinating, this flood – from $2.99 slim volumes no doubt written by or with AI to very technical stuff to … well, scroll-stoppers with a funny flair, like a new one called “How to Fake Being Smart with AI (Until You’re Not Faking)”.

HAH! Great title! So far, pretty darn good book, too.

And the author, Vincent Durham, throws major kudos in a certain direction, leading me to learn of and get another book, one called: “Smart Brevity.”

Clearly the length of this entry shows that Babblin’ Barn hasn’t read that one to the end yet, but I sure appreciate what it’s saying. Respect the readers’ time! We’re all drowning in info, in words, so please don’t throw us an anvil!

And may I introduce you to ‘The Now Edition’? (Please?)

So I’d better stop. You’ll get to know me better over time, and I hope vice versa – drop me a line, on LinkedIn or wherever you find me!

And if you do like my writing style, maybe you’ll appreciate my Grand Vision called The Now Edition: a vision of a platform/world where 21st Century “e-books” aren’t just replicas of dead trees books, written months if not years ago and locked in place by our current publishing system.

Where books can be evolving, living info organisms, married in creative ways to today’s latest on every topic – even AI, ESPECIALLY AI – and add a social element for people to not only discuss/debate the topic, but help the book evolve, much as that USA Today on the Minority Report subway changed headlines as the person was reading it. (Where IS our digital paper, anyway, darn it?!)

AI can make that happen (along with some visionary folks, including authors). This book could be a Now Edition book, if… it existed.

OK it’s late, I’ll stop there. Hope you found this breezy and not wheezy. Fun not dumb. Thanks for coming along on this journey!