At the airport, I had to look at a machine that flashed, then I didn’t have to take my shoes off in the security line. 

I think we now have robots that can look you in the eye and tell whether you have dynamite in your shoes.  

At my sister’s house in Chicago, Kate, the wife of one of my nephews, was setting the table for dinner. I asked about wine. She said,“Maybe John can pick up a bottle on the way home” and called him. 

Not one time was wine mentioned. I continued to keep a hopeful eye on her, much like my cat watches me when he thinks there is a possibility of kibble. She did nothing.  

A short time later, a young man was at the door with a bottle of pinot noir. On the face of it, it would appear that all you have to do in Chicago is say, “I would like some wine” within earshot of a telephone and robots will work it out.  

When Dr. John got home, he told me about the class he was teaching at the University of Chicago. It concerned integrating aspects of artificial intelligence into composition and called for understanding concepts like “the algorithm of the thought process.” I held out as long as the wine did, but no information changed heads.  

His brother, Ken, also my nephew, came for breakfast on the way to pick up a new car. This was a conversation I figured I could get into. I couldn’t.  He wasn’t interested in any of the stuff that interests me about new cars.  

He was all fired up because the vehicle could drive itself.  

As a joke, I asked, “Why do you have to go get it? Just call it and tell it to come pick you up!” I shared a laugh with myself while everybody else in the room looked thoughtful. John said, “We’re not quite there yet.” Ken said, “It can only do that for short distancesand it has to be line of sight.” Kate noted that there are driverless carts that deliver groceries in Chicago, and it is the same principle.  

Then someone asked, “How do you think that airplane you arrived on operates? Do you think a guy was sitting up front changing gears and looking at a road map?” 

I was starting to have that Stranger in a Strange Land, Marty McFly stumbling into the future feeling when something very comforting happened.  

I watched a PhD making biscuits. 

You might think this would involve test tubes, laser beams, soy bean byproducts and algorithm. But not so. It was from scratch, with real buttermilk and the cook elbow deep in a sack of flour as big as a baby, throwing ingredients at the bowl, using a heap of this, smidgens of that, and a handful of other stuff, squishing it all up with his fingers. It was just like I used to see it done in Tennessee kitchens before we had a phone or color TV. 

The biscuit-making PhD chatted amiably with his PhD brother who was frying bacon in about three inches of sizzling fat. He offered that this was the only way to make real biscuits. 

Take that, R2D2.  

The future may contain flashing machines that can look into your eyes and know what’s in your shoes, essays written with electricity, driverless motorized grocery carts, and automobiles that can be trained like show dogs, but no robot will ever figure out a smidgen and heap. 

As long as there’s a biscuit, we humans are still in charge.