I’m a sucker for big, round-number anniversaries. It’s a great excuse to look back and think longer term and bigger picture (and to put off thinking about losing weight or cleaning out the garage). Since I turned 50 this year, I have all the excuse I need to look back at what has changed in this world since 1960. Here is a very brief collection of factoids about what was new in 1960, and what has changed in the last 50 years.

Some major events of 1960:
– John F. Kennedy elected US President
– Gary Powers shot down over Russia while flying a U2 spy plane
– US launches the first communications satellite, the first weather satellite, the first navigation satellite, and the first spy satellite
– First Teflon non-stick cookware goes on sale
– First CERN particle accelerator becomes operational in Geneva
– France tests its first atomic bomb in the Sahara desert
– Timothy Leary begins experimenting with LSD
– Mossad agents abduct Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires (he is tried and executed in Israel)
– The 50-star US flag makes its debut
– Numerous former African colonies become independent nations as the era of European colonialism finally comes to a close
– The Beatles perform in public for the first time
– To Kill a Mockingbird and Green Eggs and Ham are published
– The birth control pill is put on the market in the US
– The Laser is invented (and first demonstrated by Theodore Maiman)
– Moore’s Law begins its climb with an integrated circuit of two components

Half Century of Growth: In the last 50 years, the global population has grown from 3 billion to nearly 7 billion people. The rate of fossil fuel consumption has increased by more than 4X, and the rate of food and fresh water consumption has increased by more than 3X.

The electronics revolution has been so incredible that the even the most grandiose hyperbole pales compared to reality. In the last 50 years the cost of a bit of electronic memory has decreased by about a factor of 100 billion. Today’s kitchen appliances boast more computing power than the supercomputers of 1960. And the rate at which transistors are made today exceeds ___________ (fill in whatever big number you can think of, like the rate of raindrops falling on the earth, or the number of grains of sand that stuck in my swimsuit last summer).

I’m not a fan of futurism (making predictions beyond a few years out is not much different from science fiction writing), but I know this: the next 50 years will be another wild ride.