A Young Friend is Graduating High School This Week

Which occasioned me to reflect that this year is my twenty year high school reunion.

The year I graduated from college:

• The big summer movies were Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, the first Batman movie (with Michael Keaton), and the Abyss. Only the Abyss used computer special effects to any great degree, and then only in one scene.
• John McTiernan filmed Hunt for Red October because the Soviet Union represented a safely evergreen nuclear threat.
• There were two Germanys and one Czechoslovakia.
• China was a hermitic third-world country with a troublesome democracy movement.
• There was no World Wide Web. The industry where I have made my career did not yet exist.
• Futurists like John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler thought industries like finance, media and publishing would lead the new Information Economy.
• HS advisors said journalism was a solid career choice for the future.
• Cell phones cost about $3/minute to use, and weighed about a pound.
• Colleges would accept neatly-handwritten application essays.