Patrick Leahy's recent harangue on the NSA's use of telephone records would be amusing if you didn't know this guy is one of 100 Senators affecting this country's laws.

Only through the press, we begin to learn the truth. The secret collection of phone call records tens of millions of Americans. Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida? If that's the case, we've really failed in any kind of a war on terror.

Now Leahy is not an idiot, no real, objectively simple-minded folk get elected to Congress, which might tell you a lot about how we overvalue intelligence and undervalue wisdom. What he is is old. 66 years old to be exact.

Now that's not very old in the grand scheme of things, but considering the massive changes our society has experienced in the last 10 years, 66 might as well be 106--Leahy is from a generation as different from that of my son as he is from that of George Washington.

There is a remarkable cultural chasm between people under and over 40 years of age with some bleed over of course. I started using what we then called "microcomputers" in my early twenties, and because I had an interest in technology, it was something that I evolved with as the technology evolved, but most people my age, not in an engineering major, had little or no exposure to computers until their late thirties and even early forties. I have friends who don't use computers--ever and they are only in their middle forties.

What looked like just another toy back in the early 80s, has turned out to be a total paradigm shift, as those who are comfortable with computers have intuitively grasped the implications and possibilities of the digital world. Those who haven't wonder what you mean by "right-click" and panic at every dialog box that comes up. But the implications go far beyond how to use a computer, but how to function in a digital society. We have a generation of seniors so befuddled by the modern world that they can't function without the help of their children. There is no one to call, no one to see for help, only a recorded message inviting you to visit the website. Seniors represent a rich vein of naivete for digital predators who exploit the computer illiteracy of the "elderly" (and not so elderly) through various identity theft schemes like phishing.

The divide is stark and it has significant implications for Congress where the average age is 59.5 in the Senate and 53.9 in the House, putting the entire Congress on the other side of the cultural canyon.

Generally, having the elder generations running the show is not a bad thing--they act like a governor on society's engine of social change, but the digital revolution has already happened, its a done deal. What we are faced with is having a bunch of clueless (largely) men writing legislation for a world that they fundamentally don't understand.

That's scary stuff.

We simply may not have time to wait for Congress to renew itself with a younger, digitally-aware cohort. For example, the major advantage the U.S. military has over just about everyone else is its use of digital technologies as a force-multiplier. Yet we have hide-bound institutions that can't keep illegals out of the country or run our ports properly. Our failure to allow our society to fully cross over the digital divide has security and economic reprecussions and the "old farts" in Congress are directly responsible.