I was born sixty years ago today. We often talk about how life has changed since the Internet age, as if life before the Internet was static. It’s good to be reminded that change is relentless, and it is not confined to any particular time period.
In my lifetime:
- Sputnik 1 and 2 were still in orbit (both launched shortly before my birth)
- The word, ‘Aerospace’ was created
- The average U.S. lifespan increased by almost ten years.
- NASA was created
- Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union
- Eisenhower was the first President to be broadcast in color on television
- Almost all of the Interstate highways were built
- Ford, GM, and Chrysler went from producing almost 90% of all U.S. cars to half that today, with Chrysler owned by foreign investors
- We went to the Moon
- There have been seven Popes, eleven Presidents, (and Donald Trump)
- General Charles de Gaulle was elected President of France
- Alaska and Hawai’i became the 49th and 50th States
- Just over a third of all U.S. adults had a high school degree, now almost ninety percent have graduated from high school
- Humans saw first image of the far side of the Moon (USSR’s Luna 3)
- Fidel Castro became Premier of Cuba
- We’ve had people in space, almost continually, for decades
- Kmart and Wal-Mart didn’t exist when I was born
- Sears went from dominating the retail market to almost complete failure
- Leaded gasoline was determined to be poisoning humans and was banned
- The World Trade Center was built and destroyed
- Average gas mileage has more than doubled
- We have advanced from rotary-dialed phones, to tone-based keypad phones, to cell phones, to smartphones
- The world population has grown from 2.9 billion to 7.6 billion
This is just a small sampling of the changes that have happened in my lifetime. What will happen in the next sixty years?