I relate to this so much, Joel. I'm 54, and I also have memories of printing out stories and editorials and art on sticky paper, using scalpels to cut and fit the stories into the pages as we laid them out on the lighted, glass board. The early days of Pagemaker and all the rest. I met my wife on those campus newspapers. I decided to forgo journalism for academia, and I've been lucky enough to make a career out of it...and now I worry about how advances in AI are going to make it impossible for me to rely upon the writing assignments I've always relied upon. But as you say, there are too many things to worry about...and so I'm just not paying close attention either. I hoping that I'll be able to adapt whenever the moment of adaptation becomes unavoidable, but until then, I'm purposefully not imagining just what that adaptation might be.
I've recently been thinking about my grandfather -- born in 1926, died in 2014 -- and the scope of technological change he saw in his life: Born before sound movies or jet planes were really things, much less widespread, and living to see the Internet era. Though I'm not sure that he ever used the Internet, which seems relevant here. He also didn't ever own a VCR or DVD player -- I'm not sure *his* life at the end looked much different than it did 50 years earlier. At some point he stopped trying to keep up. I don't think I'm ready to do *that* quite yet. But I am choosier about what to keep up with. I'm glad to hear from you I'm not the only one dealing with these things!
I relate to this so much, Joel. I'm 54, and I also have memories of printing out stories and editorials and art on sticky paper, using scalpels to cut and fit the stories into the pages as we laid them out on the lighted, glass board. The early days of Pagemaker and all the rest. I met my wife on those campus newspapers. I decided to forgo journalism for academia, and I've been lucky enough to make a career out of it...and now I worry about how advances in AI are going to make it impossible for me to rely upon the writing assignments I've always relied upon. But as you say, there are too many things to worry about...and so I'm just not paying close attention either. I hoping that I'll be able to adapt whenever the moment of adaptation becomes unavoidable, but until then, I'm purposefully not imagining just what that adaptation might be.
I've recently been thinking about my grandfather -- born in 1926, died in 2014 -- and the scope of technological change he saw in his life: Born before sound movies or jet planes were really things, much less widespread, and living to see the Internet era. Though I'm not sure that he ever used the Internet, which seems relevant here. He also didn't ever own a VCR or DVD player -- I'm not sure *his* life at the end looked much different than it did 50 years earlier. At some point he stopped trying to keep up. I don't think I'm ready to do *that* quite yet. But I am choosier about what to keep up with. I'm glad to hear from you I'm not the only one dealing with these things!