Deciding Not To Be, is the Most Violent Decision you can Possibly Make

Perhaps deciding not to be is not the correct way to look at this - but it's a way that makes sense to me.

Let me introduce myself. I was an Electronic Engineer (U of Illinois, 1959). Which meant I was an expert at Vacuum Tubes, the miracle product ot the age that began with WWII, that invented Radar.

In the Cold War, America had very large, very expensive radars, built to detect Soviet Nuclear Bombers. We assumed they had them, because we had them, and they were parked on our military airports, ready to take off at a moments notice. The Soviets did not have them, however, and a nuclear war did not erupt.

I was part of these Radar systems, however - and became modestly wealthy from them myself. I had an airplane, a car, a motorcycle - and even a wife.

But in the Seventies, my career ended suddenly. The Transistor was invented, and Vacuum Tubes became obsolete. The market was flooded with Engineers looking for work.

I did the sensible thing, and became a Technical Writer - I had a technical background, and I could write. I made the same as before, but the companies I worked for, in the Eighties, appeared and disappeared at an astonishing rate. I worked in Ventura county, Los Angeles county, Orange country (several times) and San Diego.

This was a crazy life, and everyone said so. But I could only stand so much craziness - so I left Southern California, in 1990 and moved to Silicon Valley, where the Computer was taking over.

The Java programming language was invented, and the Internet. And the Valley became the center of a huge bubble, that I could hardly believe. When this bubble ended, once again thousands of people were out of work - including me.

But something more interesting was going on - in the People World (that still existed). Most people did not understand Computers, or the Global Economy, they made possible. They saw the combination as a huge existential threat, they did not want to be part of. So they did something amazing - they ceased to exist!