1994

It was one of those moments the whole world was about to change but we didn’t know it at the time. Or why.

Twenty-nine years ago yesterday, my wife and I were celebrating the birth of our child — her first and my fourth, a son. When I located my old hand-written journal from 1994, a small paper note slipped out of it.

It turned out to be the printed notice we sent out to friends and family with the news of Aidan’s birth. A paper note on card stock — how charming that seems in retrospect! Over the next few years we welcomed two more babies into our world, another son and a daughter, but I don’t think by then we were still sending out print notices.

The reason is simple — email. In 1994, we were just beginning to have email accounts and they had not yet become our primary means of communication. Time-honored traditions like birth notices were still in vogue, but they would soon seem quaint as we all moved en masse to the new electronic mail platform.

The Internet changed everything. My career as a print journalist was effectively over and my new career as a Web-based journalist was about to begin. Soon I would be lugging a laptop everywhere, and logging hundreds of email messages per day.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but the newspapers, magazines and book publishers that had sustained journalists like me were all going to be disrupted to the point nearly of extinction. They continue to suffer to this day.

I realized that my son’s childhood would be fundamentally different from mine, though I couldn’t have imagined the gaming/cellphone/social media revolutions that were brewing for him and his generation.

So discovering that little slip of yellowing paper was for me a both a nostalgic relic and a reminder of the moment when a new world was born and an old one was slipping away.

HEADLINES:

• Hurricane Lee: Projected path, maps and hurricane tracker (ABC)

• Georgia special grand jury recommended charges against Lindsey Graham and former senators (Guardian)

• Abortions have increased significantly in states that border those with bans, new analysis finds (CNN)

• As Abortion Laws Drive Obstetricians From Red States, Maternity Care Suffers (NYT)

• Mexico ends federal ban on abortion, leaving patchwork of state restrictions (AP)

• Women win Mexican primaries; one is likely to be first female president (WP)

• Senate unity puts House Republicans in a jam over government funding fight (NBC)

• Biden Administration to Bar Drilling on Millions of Acres in Alaska (NYT)

• The federal government will seek a grand jury indictment against Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden by the end of the month, prosecutors said Wednesday. Hunter Biden faces gun and tax charges after a plea deal collapsed over the summer under scrutiny from a judge. [HuffPost]

• Main Afghanistan-Pakistan border crossing closed after guards exchange fire (Al Jazeera)

• Georgia DA moves to shield prospective jurors in Trump case (The Hill)

• Willis blasts congressman’s ‘interference’ in Fulton Trump probe (AJC)

• With 4 months left until the caucus, Ron DeSantis is betting big on Iowa (CBS)

• In Escalation, Adams Says Migrant Crisis ‘Will Destroy New York City’ (NYT)

• Trump escalates false attacks on Biden as some Republicans push toward impeachment (WP)

• Death toll rises to four in Greece after floods, more than 800 rescued (Al Jazeera)

• America Is Telling Itself a Lie About Roadkill (Atlantic)

• In Its First Monopoly Trial of Modern Internet Era, U.S. Sets Sights on Google (NYT)

• Apple is reportedly spending ‘millions of dollars a day’ training AI (The Verge)

• Why This Award-Winning Piece of AI Art Can’t Be Copyrighted (Wired)

• Do robots have to be human-like for us to trust them? (TechXplore)

• Ted Lieu dishes on how Congress can get savvy on AI regulation (Politico)

• The Catch-22 Of AI Chatbots (Forbes)

• Generative AI’s Biggest Security Flaw Is Not Easy to Fix (Wired)

• OpenAI’s first-ever dev conference hopes to draw “hundreds of developers” in November (Ars Technica)

• Derivative works are generative AI’s poison pill (TC)

• Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to study the use and risks of A.I.(Politico)

• Seattle Seahawks Prediction: The Seahawks get distracted after seeing Mount Rainier looking majestic during a game. (The Onion)