A fear for the older learner

While I am at it with the BBC, this article I read yesterday about "trendfear" describes one of my ongoing worries:
"The nagging anxiety at the back of the mind that you are missing out might be called "trendfear". "

I also particularly liked this bit he related:

"In an interview about the internet with the Sunday Times in 1999, Douglas Adams memorably satirised a common attitude towards new technology and trends.
Everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal, suggested Adams. Anything created between birth and the age of 30 is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it.
But whatever is invented after you've turned 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it -until it's been around for about 10 years, when it gradually turns out to be all right really."
 From: Trendfear: Do you ever feel you're being left behind?, by Tom de Castella, BBC News Magazine

For me, I think I probably stretched the second phase closer to 40, but I've also had a healthy dose of skepticism blended in since well before my 30s.