Dear editor:
After reading Dr. William Brown’s column last week (“Artificial intelligence plays a burgeoning role in health care,” Sept. 7), it made me think back on simpler times.
Only those who have seen the passage of 80 years or more will recall the time when a modern home, unlike today, had only two electronic devices: a telephone and a radio.
Before 1950, it was common practice to immediately run to a ringing phone because that was usually an important signal.
In large families, jockeying for position to reach the only receiver in the house was often accompanied by cries of: “It’s for me! It’s for me! It’s for me!”
Isn’t it surprising that the dozens of phones now owned by a single household can be answered in a car, theatre, bathtub or public washroom, on the subway or at the top of Everest?
We had none of that in “the good old days.”
A phone call was always welcome and radio easily filled our imaginations with vivid images of “The Lone Ranger and Silver” or “Jack Benny.”
Later, when TV arrived to fill our leisure hours, a young boy was asked if he preferred radio or TV. His reply, “I like radio. The pictures are better!”
There’s been tremendous “progress” since those ancient times. We now have access to millions of pictures, videos, opinions, talking heads and live images of murder and mayhem.
Some call this “information overload,” but we’re always demanding more. Perhaps AI will give us exactly what we deserve.
George Dunbar
Toronto