Saying no to things, particularly new information, is a hard skill to learn if you are conditioned to information being scarce. Simon, who was born in 1916, noted that for people of his age, informational poverty was a generational inheritance. “Most of us are constitutionally unable to throw a bound volume into the wastebasket.”[19] I’ve often had occasion to note that the Boomers in my life all seem far less disposed to screen information than people my age, born into the teeth of the attention age. Older folks’ phones all ring for every call—they are never on silent—and every app they have,
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