The prejudice is an ancient habit, but new forces—in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and beyond—have restored its youthful vitality.
As part of the New Yorker’s Technology issue, Tad Friend outlines the ubiquitous instances of ageism in the Silicon Valley bubble as well as in Hollywood. It can be explained in these quotes from some of the leaders in tech.
Zuckerberg once observed, “Young people are just smarter,” and the venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has said that “people over forty-five basically die in terms of new ideas.” Paul Graham, the co-founder of the Valley’s leading startup accelerator, Y Combinator, declared that the sweet spot is your mid-twenties: “The guys with kids and mortgages are at a real disadvantage.”
Next For Me Advisor Chip Conley is quoted in the piece from his article in the Harvard Business Review:
“Many young people can read the face of their iPhone better than the face of the person sitting next to them,” he explained. Offering emotional intelligence in return for their digital intelligence, he styled himself as a “modern Elder,” “who serves and learns, as both mentor and intern, and relishes being both student and sage.”
This is an exceptional article that is well researched and of “of the moment” thinking related to ageism and “encore” lives.
Link to the full article: Why Ageism Never Gets Old
