Against the Natural Order of Things

A seemingly prescient revelation from Douglas Adams as I come ever closer to turning 36:

  • Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
  • Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
  • Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

via Cory Doctorow writing for Tor Books in a piece titled You Are Not a Digital Native: Privacy in the Age of the Internet.

As someone who first got on the internet at age 12 thanks to a very nerdy friend back home in rural South Carolina and then the world wide web the next year (thanks to that same friend who would go on to move away the following year but exposing me to the wonders of bulletin boards for long distance communication in 1994… wonder whatever happened to him?) and still thinks the web is revolutionary and has found a career in it, I can relate.

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