Invisibles - 22 March 2026

In his magnificent three novel series about the Integrated Molecular Imaging System (IMIS), Grumley's hero, Mike Mansfield, a detective who finds missing children, uses "invisibles," in addition to IMIS, as key detective and research resources. Here's a link to my review of the first novel of the series, "Rollback."  "Rollback" by Michael C. Grumley | Stephen DeWitt Taylor

Invisibles: Retired formerly successful people over the age of 65. Per Grumley, no one pays any attention to "invisibles," yet they make up an untapped, unappreciated source of cluey-ness (sic). That's why Mansfield/Grumley taps into this hidden resource for talent.

Twenty years ago, "invisibles" used to populate the cashiers' positions at Deer Valley... back when a lot of ski guests paid with cash at the restaurants. If the bill was $5.25 and the purchaser handed them a ten, the old, usually female, cashiers, would always say, "do you have a quarter?" On receiving the $10.25, the "invisibles" cashiers would make change easy, passing back to the customer a five-dollar bill. "invisibles" knew how to count in their head.

Then change calculating cash registers came along... along with younger cashiers who couldn't, unlike the "invisibles," count in their heads. On passing along $10.25 to the new cashiers, and asking for a five back, it would confuse the hell out of them. In the end, you'd say, "oh screw it," and just pass along the ten-dollar bill and you would end up with three inconvenient quarters wearing a hole in your pocket. As we move toward programmable digital currency cash transactions are becoming a thing of the past anyway. And that's a story for another blog.

I'm reminded of Nicolas Carr's great book, "The Glass Cage," were Carr studies the effect of new human helping technology and wonders what the implications are of the dumbing down effect of such on humans that the new technology brings about. Ie. Thanks to change counting cash registers, people can no longer count in their head. Here's a link to my review of that book: "The Glass Cage" by Nicholas Carr | Stephen DeWitt Taylor In addition to change counting registers, think driverless cars, and even prepared meals at Trader Joes.

Are "invisibles", as geezers possessing cluey-ness (sic), a dying breed? What happens to civilization when the myriads of dumbed down doofuses we see all around us every day become geezers? Will future Mike Mansfields have to look elsewhere for help? AI?