I run down the office corridor. Just a little more printing for the team workshop tomorrow and then quickly catch my train for the next appointment.

In our office, all the printers are named after deceased pop stars; ours is called Amy (Winehouse). I walk over to Amy to grab my printouts. She is silent in all toner-earths and my print job is nowhere to be found. 'What the hell is this,' I mutter annoyed.

Turns out Amy is no longer Amy, but replaced by Amy2. I need to reinstall her. To do so, I must first download an installer. "Did you miss the mail about this?" my colleagues ask amused. They know me by now.

Instructional emails usually end up in my spam box. I set this up myself. I was quite proud of that at the time. Although now it may seem a bit drastic.

My helpful colleague suggests that I "just airdrop the files to him" then he prints them for me. While thinking about where I know airdrop from, I decline his offer. I need to win over Amy2 anyway, then just one train later.

Then a little window pops up.

"Please press agree" says my helpful colleague. I press agree and the installation program for Amy2 unfolds. Three minutes I stand with my printouts in my hands.

"What did you do that with?" I ask the helpful colleague

"Airdrop" he says

"Handy!" I say. "I didn't know it."

This makes the colleagues laugh a lot. I feel like I am 100 years old. In reality, colleagues are in their mid-20s and I will turn 50 this year. If I compare myself to peers, I dare say I am pretty tech savvy. If I compare myself to colleagues who are >15 years younger, I feel pretty much digibeet and most importantly: slow!

I think back to my first job, long ago in a progressive IT department. "Do you also want a notebook?" my boss asked. It seemed handy, for all my notes and such. That it was a laptop only became clear to me when I held it in my hands. No one had notebooks yet. If we had a computer at all, it was a PC of a cubic meter, working under DOS. You had to enter codes to create a simple bill.

Not to mention the PR cell phone era. That there were hours when no new information came to you, e.g. when you were on the road. If I start talking about that, I put myself completely on the map as a corporate senior citizen.

Still, it's fascinating to think about: the different, digital way our information-processing brain has had to digest in an absurdly short time.

Anyone born with swipe fingers will not recognize themselves in this. Anyone born before that, all too well.

We now know from brain psychology that our brain is plastic: capable of making new connections when stimulated to do so.

In the pre-swipe finger generation (say 45+), there is already a good amount of trace in that brain that is no longer necessarily effective, but still dominant, reason why e.g. we don't master all new apps in a split second: we fall back on the thinking structures we learned.

I find enviable the speed and ease with which those in their twenties and thirties navigate new apps and digital programs. It takes a bit of perseverance when I am once again the last one to enter a new Miro board for the collaborative brainstorming session, because I first want to grasp what I am entering at all and what I see moving back and forth there.

Yet I and my fellow 45+ers are never going to catch up with them. Its a simple fact of life. We both have to deal with that: 20+ by having a little patience: so the slowness of the 45+ers is not about 'empty-headedness' but rather 'full-headedness'.

And 45+ by staying eager and relying on the plasticity of our brain.

And furthermore, it is a comforting thought that even today's twenty-somethings will soon be fifty-somethings. Something our Amy is unfortunately not granted.