This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Just think of technology for a moment.

It has changed all of us.

My parents, smart and good people as they were, would be amazed at what is now possible.

Just to mention four examples:

1. With Google – or, as my Microsoft friends would advocate, Bing – you can find out anything you want in only moments.  No one has a bookcase of encyclopedias anymore!

• For newspapers, given my background long ago as a journalist, I always wanted to get ink on my hands, with a newspaper in front of me.  No longer, at least most of the time.  I go on-line routinely to read the Oregonian, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

This was driven home to me the other day when I was talking with a colleague about whether to respond to a negative article in a newspaper.  I said this:  “Be careful about whether you want to argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”

These days, I should have said, “Be careful about arguing with someone who measures performance by clicks.”

•  Or consider phone numbers.  I used to have hundreds of numbers in my head, including one for The Daily Astorian newspaper where I worked in the mid-1970s.  It was 325-3211.  I dare you to prove me wrong.  Now, I just go to the address book on my phone to find all the numbers I need.

• The fourth example is not my own.  It is drawn from a Wall Street Journal article that appeared under this headline – “Why AI Is Medicine’s Biggest Moment Since Antibiotics.”

Dr. Lloyd Minor, the dean of Stanford University’s School of Medicine, was quoted as saying he “thinks artificial intelligence will transform the medicines you take, the care you get, and the training of doctors.” 

Perhaps.  But, closer to home, I had a conversation with a doctor of mine and he said there was much more to need to know about AI in medicine before adopting it, either in part or wholesale.

So, with these kinds of technology, the results can be positive.  But that is not always the case.

Technology can be used for evil and that seems especially to be the case as all of us contend with artificial intelligence (AI) and the ways that can pervert and soil, with all due respect to the perspectives above on the potential for AI to improve health care.

I wish that we could rely on Congress and the Executive Branch Administration to come up with a reasonable regulatory approach to the uses of technology, especially AI.

These days, that hope could be misplaced, given the character of our government where supposed “leaders” worry more about their next election than about governing.

So, for the moment, I intend to use the technology resources I understand for good.

In the headline, I wrote not to tell my grandchildren.  I said that because, they dwarf me when it comes to technology.  They would be embarrassed about their grandpa.

Not really, especially, as I have done, if I continue to ask for their help and advice.