Introducing Boomer With a View: The Power of Story
2025 will be remembered as the year the story of America suffered a series of bizarre and disastrous plot twists—and the year Artificial Intelligence stepped onto center stage.
2025 will be remembered as the year the story of America suffered a series of bizarre and disastrous plot twists—and the year Artificial Intelligence stepped onto center stage. The 348 million of us living this narrative are struggling to make sense of our roles. I know I am.
At 77, I expected my remaining years to be spent enjoying national parks and revisiting the historical and cultural treasures of Washington, D.C. Instead, I find myself surveying a country rapidly becoming unrecognizable: to me, to our allies, and to anyone who cherished its imperfect but essential role as a champion of democracy and human rights.
Throughout this past year, I’ve wondered what part—if any—I might play in this unfolding drama. Most of us will be the audience. And those my age are not suited for the starring roles, as our last two presidents and many geezerly politicians have demonstrated.
But I believe I’ve found my role. I volunteer to be part of the chorus.
In Greek drama, the chorus was essential. As narrator, it provided the backstory, explained context, and summarized events. As commentator, it offered moral judgments, reflected communal values, and interpreted the significance of actions. It often infused emotional life into the play by creating atmosphere and expressing collective emotions such as fear, outrage, hope, joy and grief.
We cannot afford silence. We need a vast and varied chorus to preserve America’s history and constitution– and counter the narratives now being used to erase and rewrite them.
Similarly disruptive, AI has just this year assumed a near-universal influence before most of us have grasped its implications. We should be participants—not spectators—in shaping its role. At minimum, we need to be informed enough about Artificial Intelligence to have a basic appreciation of its potential to empower, to disrupt, and to be a tool for good and for ill.
Age inevitably diminishes us in some ways, but it enhances us in others: in experience, in perspective, in the depth and breadth of our accumulated memories. I draw on a lifetime as a student, teacher, librarian, and educational technologist. I also draw on my earlier time in the chorus, writing the original Boomer With a View blog during the Trump years from 2017–2021.
And I draw on more than four decades living inside the evolution of technology as I explore this new AI landscape.
This marks the launch of the new Boomer With a View: The Power of Story.
It’s built from three intertwined strands:
My 2 Cents (the blog) — It’s like voting. One vote cannot win an election and one voice is almost impossible to hear above the current cacophony. But millions of voices joined in chorus can be powerful. This is where I am raising my voice.
The Memoir Project — A weaving of my and my family’s story through the past century with the grander backdrop of important moments in the nation’s history. One distinguishing feature of the project is that readers can follow its composition in real time. Another is that I am enlisting one or more AI chatbots for assistance with research and some drafting of the narrative.
AI Field Notes — When I began exploring AI platforms last September, I realized it could supply the speedy research and writing assistance that could make an otherwise overwhelming project feasible. In short order, I also realized there was a bonus opportunity to experiment and report on the pros and cons of using AI Chatbots for such a task. The Field Notes are where I record the experience. The good, the bad, the bizarre, and the glitches.