Science & Tech Quote by Jimmy Buffett

Buffett’s mild, almost apologetic opener - “I hate to mention age” - is doing a lot of social work. He knows nostalgia can sound like scolding, so he disarms the listener before delivering what is, essentially, a generational critique. That move is classic Buffett: the laid-back storyteller who smuggles a sharper point into an easygoing rhythm.

The intent isn’t to declare technology evil; it’s to mourn a certain texture of living that his whole brand traded on: unstructured time, face-to-face hanging around, boredom that could turn into adventure. “Consumed” is the key word. He isn’t describing tools we use; he’s describing appetites that use us. Pairing “technology and television” also matters: one suggests the sleek, personalized, always-on present; the other is the old communal hearth of mass culture. Together they form a continuum of attention capture, from the living room screen to the pocket one.

The subtext is identity management. Buffett built an empire on escapism that felt analog and human-scaled - beaches, bars, boats, jokes, a little self-mythology. In a world of feeds and metrics, escapism becomes content, leisure becomes performative, and even “getting away” can feel algorithmically guided. He’s defending the legitimacy of checking out without turning it into a brand.

Contextually, this lands as late-career Buffett: not raging against modernity, but staking out a worldview where pleasure is slower, community is accidental, and the best parts of life aren’t optimized. It’s less “kids these days” than “we are all being trained to live narrower than we think.”