I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:
- everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
- anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
- anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.
Douglas Adams
Very clever observation from a well-known science-fiction author. I think it can easily be applied to the innovators in computer and Internet technology too; after all, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both in their early twenties when they founded Microsoft and Apple respectively. Closer to the present day, Google was founded when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were 25 years old; Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg was 20; and the list can go on.
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