Reach out, reach out. My grandmother used to say, “You have two ears, two eyes and only one mouth for a reason. Listen, watch and then maybe speak.”
Sometimes people think it's trite, but it's very meaningful to me that all the important things in life I have learned from my children and now from my grandchildren. It's not that they provide all the content of what you know or what you're relearning, but they view life from a different angle. For me, that's been a very important mindset. I write about this kind of thing.
You mentioned a coat of arms that has pluses and minuses at the bottom. That was to indicate my interest in technology and learning, but there was some fun with the media when that was released. They thought it was a secret da Vinci code message, and we'll just leave that as an open question. Maybe people will try to find the hidden message there.
The first book I wrote as a young lawyer was Computers and Law. That was in 1967, a long time ago. I was very interested in how technology, which is a rapidly changing and advancing force, was impacting on very traditional norms and conventions of the law that tend to look backward, and how we deal with that tension. I continue to write books in that area, communication law, cyber-law and so on.
What has happened in my professional lifetime, thinking about this and trying to listen a lot and write a little bit, is that the acceleration has been geometrical. It's that kind of curve, and the capacity of the human intelligence to adapt to it and adjust to it is like that, and we're dealing with this huge gap. What do you do? You don't throw up your hands in disgust, but you try to learn and listen to new ways and be sure, as you find moorings and find your way, that you are not shutting yourself off from new ideas, especially those that aren't in your head because you're a generation or two older.