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Aren’t we overdue for things to get over-done?

By Ed Goldman

Why have some types of technology advanced in such an exponential way while others came to a hard stop after achieving only one modest goal? 

Yes, I’m thinking of the self-cleaning oven.

I mean, with all these overnight tech billionaires dominating our news, economy and guest bedrooms at the White House, shouldn’t we already have self-cleaning homes and self-diapering babies?

Can’t somebody create the self-Martinizing pantsuit, self-changing motor oil and self-correcting cocktail conversation? Of the latter, why should we have to go through all the bother of sending notes of apology after subtly implying at an office party that our boss is a hypocrite by having greeted him identically twice (“One for each face, sir”)? 

Couldn’t we have a snark-preventive chip installed in our Blather Center? Science won’t tell you the Blather Center exists, but reliable sources tell me it’s right there along with the cerebrum, brainstem and cerebellum. I’ll grant you that those sources were reporting what they’d absorbed in a pre-K morning class, along with “dinosaur stuff” and “snack.” Still.

Anyway, I’m on this, friends. I’m currently creating spec drawings for self-dusting bookcases, self-vacuuming carpets, self-loading and -emptying dishwashers and self-clipping fingernails. To be truthful, that last one has become the most challenging, since it involves my effecting nothing less than evolutionary anatomical change, which sometimes can take millions of years to come to fruition. But I can be patient to a fault, as my creditors, friends and San Andreas himself will verify (in writing, upon request).

I have some other innovations I’m working on—unaided by A-I, I’ll have you know have you know have you know have you know (oops. Sorry about that. I must’ve been hacked by one of those pre-K kids using her dad’s ChatGPT app). 

Below is a Walt Whitman Sampler of them. I created that brand because I think many of these are as poetic as they are tasty and just as likely to contribute to adult-onset acne:  

– The Auto-Ozempic and Climate-Change Denial App. This combo product is sent from your computer, smart-phone or pet starling when a voicemail is left for you from (a) a friend desperate to know how you lost 76 pounds in less than a week or (b) a volunteer asking you to be a sponsor of a Greenpeace conference at the North Pole next winter. It will feature an A-I simulation of your voice saying, respectively, (a) “Through diet adjustment and exercise” and (b) “I can’t afford a sponsorship at this time but call me the very moment the ice caps break into cubes, and I’ll commit to buying five bags for my next mocktail party.”

– The Pop Songs Chip. This device—developed over a period of years during which several of its contributing geniuses alternately fought with each other, fell in love, changed their birth gender, changed their rivals’ birth gender without permission or died in pistol duels—is, at long last a revelation. It stores up all the pop songs you never learned or even liked and, with the click of what appears to be an unexceptional-looking Bic ballpoint pen (albeit one obtruding from your neck) and also lets you sing them in the identical voice of their most famous recording artists. Choose an era in which you paid scant attention to the music (for me, this would be the decades following the breakup of the Beatles, Bob Dylan’s born-again epoch and Billy Joel with a full head of hair), open up your mouth and be the life of the next karaoke night at your favorite bar. One note of caution: Because your singing will also feature the backup instruments coming from your mouth, be prepared to do some mansplaining. Especially if you’re a woman.