It used to be that you probably earned your living in the same profession your father did, and that your son would also practice. The world of your grandfather was not all that different from the world of your grandchildren. Sure, times changed, the King died, his son took over from him, the barbarians might raid your town, or there might be a war with a neighboring kingdom. Occasionally, in your lifetime, a new spice or cloth might suddenly appear in the market from some foreign land, or a new technique of shipbuilding or weaving might be adopted by your fellow craftsmen. But as a rule, times didn't really change all that much. Occasionally your elders might complain about how people weren't as pious as they were in their day, or a new fashion in clothing or grooming might suddenly appear. A plague, or a drought, or a flood or famine might pass through your life, but essentially the past gradually flowed seamlessly into the future. Aging through time was like walking through a landscape, a lot of changes at the small scale, but overall, the land didn't change any more than the climate.

Even if you were vaguely aware that the dim past was different somehow than the present, you rarely thought of it that way. When you viewed a picture of an event in your mythology or your history the figures depicted in the image were dressed pretty much the same way you were, wore their hair the way you did, lived their lives the same, they spoke the same language (although Grandpa did have some peculiar sayings, sometimes).

With the advent of writing, things began to change. We realized the world did change. The classical Greeks of the Iron Age understood that the heroes who fought in Troy used only bronze weapons, and did not ride horses, but only used them to pull their chariots. And nowhere in Homer is writing mentioned.

The speed of social time is increasing. Our parents knew their world was very different from that of their parents, and they find our world incomprehensible. We can clearly see how much things have changed just in our own lifetime. The speed of time is increasing, and sooner or later, no matter how adaptable human beings may think they are, perhaps there is a point beyond which we simply will no longer be able to keep up. This concept of boomer, gen x, millennials, and other demographic cohorts coexisting and competing in the same society is totally new.

Remember Y2K? Can you recall what it was like before cell phones, the internet, what research was like before Google and Wikipedia? It used to be you could identify an educated man by how much he knew. That is meaningless in a world where you can look up anything in a moment, wherever you are, at any time. The pocket calculator made my computational training obsolete, and pocket calculators themselves are now obsolete! Learning new technologies seems pointless when you know in a few years they will become ancient history. Mastering a new computer language is like learning a dead language. Why bother learning Sanskrit or Assyrian or Demotic Egyptian? They used to teach Latin when I went to high school. No one talks like that any more, except some dusty old scholars. I once considered learning Japanese. Today, its a lot smarter to study Mandarin. How much longer before English starts to fade? Maybe not in our lifetimes, but perhaps in that of our children, certainly in that of our grandchildren.

We have all become strangers in a strange land, exiles in our own country, walking anachronisms, ghosts. We are all soon to be invisible, as well as blind to what is all around us. Even if we bravely try to keep up, every new skill and technology we learn soon becomes old hat.

I have been forced to accept that in spite of my education and experience, I can no longer earn a living except at the most menial of jobs. Who needs a Fortran programmer, a LORAN expert, a celestial navigator, a stereo photogrammetrist, a measuring engine or blink comparator operator, or film photographer?

No, I'm not complaining about how old and useless I've become. I'm doing all right, and I think I can hang on until my time comes. But I'm terrified at how many others, many much younger than I am, are realizing the same about themselves and are becoming very angry and very restless.