He tarnished his reputation altogether with that in eyes of many, despite his early graphics research advancements and later business success.
Alvy Father of alpha channel Ray Smith had quite a success and recognition as well and is a well-known founding figure in CG.
When we get older the same year is becoming a smaller and smaller fraction of our lifetime, thus the time feels to go by much quicker.
At least that was always my personal conclusion.
Possibly also the times when you get stuck in something and think "oh wow this is dragging on" decreases as you age. But it's not the number of times a situation happens (e.g. traffic is getting worse over time) but that reaction to it happens less. Perhaps we get more patient with time and let it pass over quicker.
It turns out that when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.
And understatement for anyone who has kids.
Maybe this contributed to him leaving his career. Jobs liked the saying "stay foolish".
Supposedly, the reason that when looking back long term an older person things that e.g. the last year passed much faster is, that they remember more years, so the one year represents a smaller fraction of their memory. This is similar with forgetting things, older people are not more forgetful (provided there is no dementia...), but they know more things that they have forgotten.
I may have as many memories of what happened when I was 7 than what happened when I was 27 (despite the time difference).
Evidence for this hypothesis: sit down and write down month by month everything you did in the last year (vacations, jobs, birthdays, whatever), will make the year feel fuller.
I say this because anecdotally, I have a few years in my twenties that seem like they flew by, because I was living a pretty boring life working in an office. But then later in my thirties I have some 3-month periods that stretch wider and longer in my memory then those entire years in my twenties, because I was out and exploring.
Later on, I tried emailing him as he had invited me to do so about my hypothesis that the neurons that produce the perception of time start firing slower as we age so time seems to be moving faster (a lower-resolution sampling of time, like a skipping stone arcoss a pond rather than through it moving much faster) He never replied.
Then I emailed him again to congratualte him on his receiving the Turing Award, a year later, and once again no reply. I felt even more awkward for emailing him twice.
Reading this complaint from his co-founder, I surmise that Ed may not be very good at maintaining relations. A bit disturbing to hear that he omitted his co-founder from being mentioned.