Digital Is the New Third Age

I wouldn't go back in time for a minute...for the simple reason that I can't go back.

But at the same time, I would nevertheless not like to. I wouldn't have all the tech-savvy things and comforts that have come to us in the past decades. Who would like to stain one's fingers again with a hectograph? Who would like to erase and correct each letter through a half-dozen pages of carbons?

I am enjoying the Third Age while waiting for more calamitous things to happen. Like aspiring young writers (of which I was one) who never got closer to The New York Times than pressing a face to the windowpane, I now find that, thanks to the social networks and the new technologies, I can join the blogosphere and get instant and unvetted propagation around the digital world.