I am only late-50s and already feel invisible. I am younger than most of the people I do things with, and older than most of the people I work with. The people I do things with are retired/near retired so it’s a little hard to relate to the freedom they have. At work I find the younger folk have a lot more energy and tolerance for typical corporate BS than I presently do - I am becoming that older, grumpy guy in the office. It’s a strange and sometimes lonely place to be.
And then of course the other one: there are old pilots and bold pilots. But there are no old, bold pilots…
Right, it’s complete rubbish. Maybe in a few cases there exist “differently abled” people who have actual skills that are truly different from the average person. But in those cases, they really are “abled”.
The PC usage though is just a mealy-mouthed way of saying “not very good”.
I started on something even clunkier - the Friden Flexiwriter. But we did have a batch of TTYs in the PDP-11 lab with the machine we used to teach assembler. When I was at Bell Labs I got to visit the Teletype design center in Skokie and the factory in Little Rock, though they were assembling PCs from crappy Intel motherboards at the time.
Exactly. Someday I’m going to write a book called “What happens after you press Enter” which describes what happens when you interact with a computer at the basic level. How many of them have ever done interrupt programming? Alas, my editor doesn’t handle that stuff, and a book proposal is not high on my priority list at the moment.
When my younger daughter took CS 101 about 20 years ago the only programming they did was a few lines of JavaScript. The rest was what FTP is, the UNIX command line, etc.
This seems to be a natural progression of new technologies.
They disappear into the background of everyday life.
In the 19th century electricity was a new marvel. Today, you turn the switch and it Just Works.
How many people today know much if anything about generators, transformers etc?
I have. But unlike you youngsters working with newfangled PDP-11s that had interrupt vectors, 
I first wrote interrupt programs on the venerable PDP-8, where you had a single interrupt service routine (ISR) that had to poll all known devices to see which one was responsible for the interrupt and handling it. And if there was some mystery device that you didn’t know about, why, then, as soon as you turned interrupts back on, you’d be right back in the ISR, and be stuck in an infinite loop.
But back on topic, I used to drive my elderly mother around to grocery and other stores when she was well into her 90s, and the impression I generally had was that her age accorded her deference and respect, which I was always gratified to see. Now in my 70s, I occasionally feel that same sense of deference. During the peak of COVID, my next-door neighbour, seeing me in the driveway, asked if I was doing OK and said to let them know if there was anything at all that I needed that they could help with. But for the most part, I don’t feel treated any differently than I did in my 20s. I do greatly enjoy not having to go in to work, as much as I often enjoyed the work and enjoyed the socialization.
If you want to interact with younger people, join a group (social, political, anything) that’s not geared to old folks. You will be treated as an equal.
True. As long as you don’t go in with the attitude that you have more to offer than any other member of the group just because you have lived longer.
Those were the days. I never got to work on a PDP8, though used 11s quite a bit. And later worked on 8-bit micros… (the 6809 was a nice architecture). Later in my career I became more of a fan of a single-stack approach where everything is done by (optimized) polling, avoiding the context-switch overhead of interrupt servicing.
But we are getting far off topic… perhaps we should start a new thread about historical computers and experience working with them!
Serious question - what sorts of groups would you recommend? I’m not sure if it really is the Bowling Alone effect, but the groups - at least the ones I’m interested in - sure seem to trend older. Gardening, book discussion, local government, golf… And then, the issue is how you translate interacting with a younger people in the context of that group, to a more general relationship outside of the group.
I really wish I lived closer to my daughter’s place (she’s about a 45 minute drive from here on the Freeway From Hell). My woodworking bench is in her garage, still unassembled after three years. If I were closer, I could still do some hobby work. People here keep telling me “Oh, you could do woodworking in the basement!” Um. . .no. While I could get away with making a ton of dust in my shop in Portland without having a vacuum system, that wouldn’t work here. If I didn’t have arthritic hands, I could maybe learn to carve, but full-on woodworking won’t fly.
I’m involved in a political action group, we’re doing something that we feel is important, and people respect each other. We occasionally meet “in real life” but mostly we communicate online. But there are lots of other activities out there that are more in person – choral groups, dance groups, etc. For example, our small city has a country dance group that’s open to the public and it attracts all ages.
You can try meetup.com to find groups of all sorts.
Although at least around here it seems to have been mostly co-opted as a tool for wannabe “influencers” to gather a following. The remaining activities where the participants are younger seem focused mostly on business networking or Florida’s speshul curse: get rich quick in real estate.
But once in awhile I find something interesting to attend and have met a few interesting folks.
I’m 65 going on 66; I feel like a valued elder to my children and grandchildren, and even my parents would back me up on that. But to my sisters, I’m just the rainbow sheep of the family. 
There’s the crux of your problem. You need to explore things that are of interest to young people rather than expect them to go out of their way to show interest in yours.
71, retired five and a half years. I don’t know about being valued, but I’m acknowledged by most people I meet. But then the only places I go are grocery stores (BJ’s, Super Walmart, the commissary, Stop & Shop, Walmart, Aldi, and Big Y), the library, and a few doctors’ offices (cardio, ortho, PCP, and neuro), with occasional visits to restaurants.
Have you thought about using a maker space? I don’t know if this one is conveniently located for you but it’s a good way to build stuff using equipment you wouldn’t otherwise have access to and to meet people with similar skills and interests. My husband learned how to weld at one.
Way over 60 here, just about alone in the world. Middling health, bad back, getting fat old and gray. Who cares. One grown daughter who sends a text now and then, a picture of my grand-cat, and makes a surprise visit once in a blue moon. There is great love I feel, but we simply aren’t very close. I only hope she will be there for me in an emergency. I am not active and keep to myself in a quiet little apartment building. Me and the cat watch birds at the feeder, I watch movies, I cook whatever I want. I am ‘comfortable’, have all I need and see a friend once a week for lunch. And I signed up to get a wellness-check phone call from the county mental health dept. every evening . To make sure I haven’t fallen down the 3 flights of stairs here or am lying dead on the bathroom floor. … So far, like Arthur Spooner on King of Queens, no one wants to chronicle my wisdom! … I do notice now I get talked down to a lot, people explain even ordinary things very carefully as if I’m getting feeble-minded (my friend says, well, we are, aren’t we?? lol) It’s a lonely life. I’ve failed at friendships all my life, being introverted and ‘on the spectrum’. I’ve been used and abused, and though I’m so alone now, it’s nothing new. Can’t please everyone so I might as well please myself as long as I’m able.
I’ve seen those online. There are a couple that might be of interest.
I have access to one that is affiliated with my former workplace. I keep threatening to learn to sew, and they have the machines, so if I ever follow through, I won’t have to buy one. I also learned how to use a 3-D printer there.
Lotsa good suggestions. Thanks. I think I have to admit that I’m not likely to do much to change things for myself, since, as I’ve aged, my tolerance for most group activities has waned. A lot of the groups in which we met older folk were our UU church, and for me, golf and music. We are no longer active or interested in church. And for various reasons, my interest in politics has waned.
Yeah - I get that. But part of the problem is having attained a certain age, I have a decent idea of what interests me and what doesn’t. I guess I’m happier pursuing my interests alone, or w/ othe rold farts, than searching about for things that interest younger folk that MIGHT interest me.