I am an old man. That’s a story I keep telling myself in part in jest, in part in exaggerated, melodramatic concern, but it’s something that I felt for real, for once, this weekend when out for donuts with friends. The trigger was simple; while out with those friends, I didn’t check my phone once — I had it with me, sure, but beyond looking at it to check the time at one point, I didn’t look at my messages, Twitter or anything else like that. Those I was with, however, did so pretty continuously. More impressively, they were apparently having multiple conversations with people while we were talking and I didn’t even notice. I’d think we were all engrossed in the conversation we were having, and suddenly they’d drop some comment about something that had just happened on Twitter or whatever; I came home to discover that there had been an ongoing text message thread that I was part of going on the entire time, without me even knowing.
I thought to myself, this is what happens when you get older; there’s a point where you hit the level of information you’re able to deal with at one time, and that’s it. My friends weren’t there yet, they could take more in (and put more out there) effortlessly. One of these days, the speed with which I can process information will seem old-fashioned and archaic, while everyone else will be processing tens of chats in real time and virtually without giving it a first thought, never mind a second. Welcome to the future.