Forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, aughts, teens, twenties
I was there. And I want to tell you about it.
I was present and actively involved at three watershed times, the big waves, the times and trends that changed the world: the 60s world youth uprising, the personal computer boom in the 80s, and the Internet or dot-com boom in the 90s, the stark decline of the USA in a slow and gradual coup of ignorance and toxicity in the teens and twenties. And I watched like we all watched the big moments, from Sputnick in 1957 to the rise of Trump as cult figure through 2024 and dictator in 2025.
Here are some quick links to get you started. And some placeholders for future stories.
Fifties: The postwar boom, Sputnik, the space race. Childhood in a then-sleepy suburb of San Francisco. Born in 1948, I turned 7 in 1955 and 11 in 1959.
Sixties: Kennedy assassinated. The Beatles. Johnson vs. Goldwater. A new world consciousness. The Haight Ashbury, the summer of love, the free speech movement, the student uprising against the Vietnam War. I lived briefly in the Haight in 1966. Then college as the whole world changed.
Seventies: Mexico in the 70s. Married with kids in Mexico City. UPI, Business Week. Nixon resigns. I interviewed Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan. I covered earthquakes and hurricanes and kidnappings. I spent six weeks in Cuba in 1977. OPEC and long lines at gas stations. Then came Stanford Business School and we returned to the states.
Eighties: (work in progress) Stanford biz school. Silicon Valley in the 80s, Apple Computer, personal computer revolution.
Nineties: (work in progress) Palo Alto Software. Startups. Oregon in the 90s, the Internet, the web, the big boom.
Aughts: (work in progress) The dot-com crash, the 2001 recession. Growing Palo Alto Software. Incorporating the new generation. Grandkids. Obama elected. 9/11/2001.
Teens: (work in progress) Obama re-elected. Trump elected. Megan’s wedding.
Twenties: (work in progress) The pandemic and great crash of 2020. The fall of the United States in 2025.