Not long ago, I was standing in line outside a theatre, with my phone in hand—I had just received a text message from the couple who were to meet us for the evening feature—when a passer-by asked me the time. I glanced away from the phone, lifted the other hand, exposed my wrist, only at that point realizing that the information requested was already available on the handheld device. “I suppose,” I observed to the passer-by, “that this is what they call a generational ‘tell.’”

senescently,