Douglas Adams, the noted author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” was a prolific writer whose creative work encompassed essays, books, screenplays and television. I can’t say I’m a devoted fan, but I think I read Hitchhiker some years ago. After his death in 2001, an unfinished novel called the “Salmon of Doubt” was published by his estate. I saw a quote from it recently in an essay attempting to explain our sometimes knee-jerk response to the remorseless march of progress.

“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies,” Adams wrote. “1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

Sound at all familiar? Do you see yourself anywhere in the taxonomy of that observation? The quote is quite meme-worthy, but like all memes, it’s a generalization that isn’t universally true if it’s true at all. You almost want to overlay a standard distribution curve on it to see what percentage of which cohort embraces the attitudes described. I invite you to click on the comments addressed at our video on electric airplane air racing to see examples of what I’m talking about and you can then surmise who hews to the Adams hierarchy. Dismissiveness ahead of rational analysis is a disease every bit as virulent as wide-eyed Pollyannaism.