Our lives today are so dominated by the "Big Five" that it might be easy to forget just how recently this came to be the case. Here they are, ranked by market cap:
Apple 1976 -- 45 years old. (Children: Mac (37), iPhone (14).)
Microsoft 1975 -- 46 years old. (Adopted child, PowerPoint, is 34.)
Amazon 1994 -- 27 years old soon. (Child Alexa will soon turn 7.)
Google 1998 -- 23 years old soon. (Adopted child, YouTube is 16.)
Facebook 2004 -- 17 years old. (Adopted child, Instagram, will soon turn 11.)
There are not very many human families in the U.S. with these kind of demographics -- two of the five are Gen X, two are Gen Y, and one is Gen Z.
In 1975, by contrast, the top five U.S. companies were all automobile or oil companies. But back in the early 1960s, scientists at MIT had envisioned a world where networked computers would tie everyone together, and Apple and Microsoft were the first two giants to emerge in the Internet era, which kicked off in the 1990s.
So this entire ecosystem has grown up in our lifetimes. We are therefore the living custodians of what remains of the previous world, with all of its messy inefficiencies and lack of connectedness.
When my grandchildren ask me about my youth, they seem mainly perplexed by a world utterly bereft of screens. A world where kids like me ran free in fields, hunted for sport, made up our own games, and never called anyone on a phone.
When you wanted to see friends you ran to their house. The front doors were always unlocked, at least in the places where I lived.
Movies existed, of course, and so did early television, but they were mainly sidelights to our play outdoors.
One huge past event hovered over everything -- World War II. Its aftermath was palpable in the surplus Army jackets we all wore, the Army tents we camped in, and the stories our fathers and uncles told from their years overseas.
I remember talking with several of my cousins, all boys, about how we would prefer to die when we had to. Nobody chose cancer, heart attacks, strokes, accidents, murder or fire, the stuff that would actually happen to us. We all said we would die as military heroes when it came to it.
That seemed feasible enough as we grew because boys of my age were subject to the draft, which meant going off to Vietnam. Some of my cousins did.
I didn't. By 18 I'd turned against the war and was committed to be a draft dodger, after college. So, I joined the Peace Corps, and by the time that was over, my draft status was determined by a lottery, and I drew a high number.
That war ended gradually and ignominiously. The guys who would have come home as war heroes came home instead to a bitterly divided nation. Many were addicted to drugs, suffering from what later came to be called PTSD, and scorned by an older generation of veterans who didn't understand our generation's general antipathy to war, and to the Vietnam War particularly.
Many of the former soldiers joined the antiwar movement.
As we aged, more wars would ensue, but now they would be fought only by professional troops. No more draft. While they fought abroad, most of us -- 99 percent -- lived in peace in more affluence than the world had ever seen.
In the process it was not lost on my generation that the last real heroes preceded us and that none of us are going to die as heroes.
But we could die rich, richer than anyone could have imagined. And we could get that way by the computer.
And that, children, is how the Big Five became America's royalty.
***
[Personal note: Now the pandemic restrictions have been lifted and it is summer in California, I'm going to be moving place to place more fluidly, staying in different zip codes, and turning off my location information at Facebook. Officially speaking, I'm gone for the summer.]
The news:
* A Top Virologist in China, at Center of a Pandemic Storm, Speaks Out -- The virologist, Shi Zhengli, said in a rare interview that speculation about her lab in Wuhan was baseless. But China’s habitual secrecy makes her claims hard to validate. (NYT)
* U.S. Covid-19 Deaths Top 600,000 (WSJ)
* The Senate unanimously approved a bill Tuesday that would make Juneteenth, the date commemorating the end of chattel slavery in the United States, a legal public holiday. (NPR)
* ‘Pure insanity’-- Justice Dept. rebuffed Trump bid to overturn election (Reuters)
* England Extends Covid Restrictions, Delaying Opening One Month (AP)
* Bipartisan group of senators introduces $40 billion bill to close the digital divide (WP)
* In Congress, Republicans Shrug at Warnings of Democracy in Peril -- As G.O.P. legislatures move to curtail voting rules, congressional Democrats say authoritarianism looms, but Republicans dismiss the concerns as politics as usual. (NYT)
* "I’m a gay, Christian pediatrician and have no doubt: Jesus would reject anti-trans laws." (WP)
* Some stolen U.S. military guns used in violent crimes (AP)
* The Woman Who Forced the U.S. Government to Take UFOs Seriously (The Guardian)
* NIH says five U.S. states had coronavirus infections even before first reported cases (Reuters)
* Like many cities across the United States, the homeless population in Portland, Ore., has increased because of the pandemic, leading the overwhelmed city to start issuing ultimatums to people to clear out. (WP)
* Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said at a news conference that she was sorry for comparing pandemic-era health recommendations to the Holocaust. The Georgia Republican and QAnon conspiracy theorist visited the Holocaust Museum and said she had learned more about the horrors of the Nazi genocide against Jewish people. [HuffPost]
* G.O.P. Bills Rattle Disabled Voters: ‘We Don’t Have a Voice Anymore’ (NYT)
* Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Why do presidents forget that? " President Biden should break with his recent predecessors and end all attempts to criminalize the practice of journalism. I can see why it would be difficult for any administration to put up with inconvenient leaks. But that is what democracy requires." (Opinion -- Eugene Robinson/WP)
* A new federal intelligence report warns that adherents of QAnon could target Democrats and other political opponents for more violence as the movement’s false prophecies don’t come true. Trump’s loss to Biden disillusioned some believers in “The Storm,” a supposed reckoning in which Trump’s enemies would be tried and executed. [AP]
* ‘I’m Not Looking For Conflict With Russia,’ Biden Says (NYT)
* Huge disparities in vaccination rates are creating islands of vulnerability across the country (Editorial Board/WP)
* The departure of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel is a relief for Democrats, but Iran and the Palestinians could test Mr. Biden’s relations with a fragile new Israeli government. (NYT)
* Overdoses from fentanyl have increased by more than 2,100 percent in California in five years. (The Guardian)
* Shifting Focus, NATO Views China as a Global Security Challenge (NYT)
* Google said it is offering staff more employment flexibility, allowing roughly 20% of its employees to work from home permanently and another chunk of workers to shift to a different office locations. (WSJ)
* Tech giants have to hand over your data when federal investigators ask. (WP)
* The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is drying up and exposing communities to toxic dust from the pesticides in the lake bed. A number of proposals to fix the issue focus on pulling in water from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. (USA Today)
* The Salton Sea also experienced three dozen earthquakes up to 3.2 magnitude within 24 hours on Monday. (San Luis Obispo Tribune)
* Deb Haaland, the interior secretary, has advised President Biden to reinstate boundaries at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, and also in a marine area off New England. All were reduced by former President Trump. (NYT)
* Doctors Warn Of Burns From Asphalt As A Record-Breaking Heat Wave Envelops The West (NPR)
* Historic heat wave brings 100-degree heat to 40 million in western U.S. (WP)
* A litter of gray wolf pups was spotted in Colorado for the first time in 80 years. (NYT)
* Pitchers will be ejected and suspended for 10 games for using illegal foreign substances to doctor baseballs in a crackdown by Major League Baseball that will start June 21. The commissioner’s office, responding to record strikeouts and a league batting average at a more than half-century low, said Tuesday that major and minor league umpires will start regular checks of all pitchers, even if opposing managers don’t request inspections. (AP)
* Man Takes Solace In Fact That World’s Oldest Person Didn’t Become Notable Until Age 112 (The Onion)
***
"You Are My Hero"
You are my hero, don't let me see you frown
It's only a mountain you can climb that high
No that's not a teardrop there's something in your eye
And if I will follow I'll be a hero too
You are my hero, my hero and my friend
You know if you take it one step at a time
You can climb that mountain hero friend of mine
And if I will follow I'll be a hero too
You are my hero, it makes me want to shout
I know you can get there a winner by a mile
When I think about it makes me want to smile
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