It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, and if my response was “devasting”, I’m doubly sorry.

Never forget that we’re of approximately the same age, in the same generational cohort. Most of us in this group are at risk of oldfartism, and I think we should watch each others’ backs. I spoke up to try to halt or slow any tendency to start withdrawing in bitterness from the world. My intentions were entirely positive.

That withdrawal thing is a matter of concern for our cohort, and I conceive of the Zone, long term, as an antidote for isolation as we all age. The recent thread on Community in which Tom noticed an incomplete draft post by Eri and worried about her health is telling–we’re already trying to support each other, and I intend to encourage that sort of thing.

So, ER, while I apologize for handling it in a way that wounded, I can’t apologize for my concern. Tell me to shut up, OK, but don’t tell me not to worry.

I have noticed myself slipping into the temptations and cliches of old-fartdom lately, and I have caught myself using my age as an excuse for my reluctance to adapt and engage with the modern world, i.e., my laziness. That reluctance is a psychological trait I’ve always had, even as a youth, but now seems to be expressing itself increasingly in my behavior. I’ve always been a dilettante. I would like to think I am recognizing this, and trying to do something constructive about it. Maybe I’m just fooling myself.

That really hurt, Robert. Seriously.

One of the things that drives me crazy listening to the True Old Farts is the KidsTheseDays Rant. The problem is that we have grown different from them. They were just born, it’s not their fault. But as Tom was quick to point out above, the young gravitate to shiny new technology, and that’s fine, that’s one of the things the young are good for. Or I suppose I should say “good at”, except that being consumer sinks for pretty technology is a useful economic function. And that’s fine…

I don’t own a smartphone, and have trouble seeing the point. The pads look interesting, maybe in a year or two when they’ve got the bugs worked out…I don’t measure my mental health or my fitness in the present world by my degree of compulsion to grab magpie-like at new technology. I’m not past my expiration date yet, and I like to think that what I’ve gained is perspective about technology.

So cut the maudlin crap, ER. Seriously.

Aren’t you in an upbeat mood today. I’ll try not to spoil it, but merely note in passing the strong correlation of age with the sort of sourness we’re talking about. The most dissatisfied people in America today tend to be the oldest. Don’t ask me what my weekly conversations with an 84-year old Atilla the Republican are like these days. That’d spoil your good mood fer sure.

Enjoy it…

I worked as an image processing and computer graphics applications programmer for 13 years, eight of them in Silicon Valley, and today I have to get my wife to re-program the TV every time we get a nearby lightning strike.

I used to really get into the latest new thing, and then gradually I just came to see it as just a chore. Learning new stuff was fun, but learning stuff that would be obsolete in a year, every year, soon got old.

I guess that’s what’s being an old fart is all about. I’m a lot smarter than I was back then, I’ve developed a really good bullshit filter, for one thing. But I also don’t look forward to novelty or change like I used to. And when you start catching yourself complaining that the radio on your car has too many buttons and features, you realize the world is either starting to leave you behind, or you just feel like getting off.

Since 1970 the population of the world has gone from something under 4 billion to almost 7 billion. And yet the percentage of that population that is malnourished has gone from 37 percent down to about 17 percent. That’s still a lot of people (remember, it’s a percentage) but it’s not going down the Malthusian vector. And how soon we forget how the nuclear sword of Damocles had been part of our everyday paradigm. Now the Soviet Union is gone, and without a shot fired (technically).

We didn’t end up under a world tyranny, despite some people’s best efforts.

Medical technology continues to improve.

We don’t have colonies even in Antarctica. Mostly because nobody’s allowed to make money there. We’ll have colonies on Mars when someone can make money doing it, same motivation as almost every colonization and exploration effort in human history.

Girls look pretty damn good in this future. Just my opinion.

Supersonic airliners were regulated out of existence. To be fair, the market and tech weren’t really ready for it yet. At some point suborbital transport might fill that niche a lot better.

“Jim Crow” hung people from trees. You can avoid Rush Limbaugh by turning off the radio.

There aren’t any flying cars yet, but considering what people feared back in the day, I think things turned out pretty good.

The future has turned out to be a big disappointment. The technology never game us the glittering New Age it promised, It just gave us McCarthy in HD.

I look at America, and I see a lot of people who are both future-shocked and traumatized by the present. Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised by the backlash against the 21st century and the desire of millions to return to the comforting certainties of the 18th.

At least, certainties in retrospect, since we know how their story turned out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 18th century wasn’t so comforting to those who lived it.