Republished by permission of the author.
People age quickly on the Internet.
The other night, I felt very old myself. The average age in the audience is about 70, and they are all sharp as tacks. I sat next to a woman who came to DC to work in the Truman administration, and she asked me questions about the course that I'm going to be teaching that were more stimulating than any I can hope to hear from the actual students. One of the speakers at the seminar was a young dude from the online division of the Washington Post. He tried making the case that we should be happy about losing our privacy.