Nice article. For an old-timer like me (I started playing tournament chess in 1985), a lot of that hits home.
One thing I would add is how post-mortems have changed. It used to be that half the fun of a chess game was sitting down together to analyze the game afterward. This can still happen, but it’s increasingly rare. Many people now consider it a waste of time, and just go straight to the computer for analysis. Even when someone does condescend to analyze with you, they will often immediately flip open their laptop and fire up the “engine”, which becomes a third partner in the analysis (and, for me, an unwanted partner). In my opinion, there’s plenty of time for that later. What I want to do in a post-mortem is pick my opponent’s brain, not his computer’s. What were you thinking when you did this? Why did you do that? Why didn’t you do that? How would you have responded if I had done this? I rarely get answers to these sorts of questions anymore. It almost seems like people are unwilling to venture an opinion without backup from their engine – they’re afraid of being “wrong”. And I find that sad.
I miss post-mortems also. The skittles rooms used to be full of post-mortems right up to the start of the next round. Many friendships were formed over post-mortems.