LITMIR.BIZ

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contribute a piece on the European computer scene. In it I noted France’s Minitel, launched two years before. Millions of terminals free to telephone subscribers who for a fee could make online purchases, check stock prices, search databases and chat with other users. A similar service was offered by British Telecom in the UK. I compared the AT&T’s upcoming breakup with Europe’s state monopoly model, noting that competition might stimulate a marriage in the U.S. between computing and telecommunications, though for now Europe has the edge.

      In late December, as we were putting our story to bed we were shocked to find Time Magazine had stolen our thunder. Their annual Man of the Year issue had been recast as the Machine of the Year. “The Computer Moves In,” the cover proclaimed, with a paper-maché older man slouched in front of a computer trying to figure out how to work the damned thing. Had he opened the magazine he would have been even more dismayed, for inside, a thirteen-year-old middle-school student was shown tutoring two “adventurous septuagenarians,” and of a group of students in a computer lab one of them was – you guessed it – six years old.

      So the future is here and it belongs to the young. It always has, of course, but clearly, something radically new was in the air. I saw it at home. Diane and I shared our computers with the boys and when Emma logged on we had to add a third one. Three kids ten and under, all computer-literate and it wasn’t just Donkey Kong and Pong, either. School reports, history and geography, language drills, calculations and computations. Paul Junior even found an action game pitting Rome against Carthage.

      Among the questions – will this new technology save us or destroy us? I decided to do a couple of Dispatches on the topic. Together with the decline of America’s durable goods manufacturing, I wrote, computers had the potential to outdo the industrial revolution in putting people out of work, enabling a few to do the work of many and do it faster and better. Productivity, it was called, but the dark side of that shiny coin is downsizing and its cynical twin, rightsizing. Will computers create enough jobs to make up for the damage they cause? Will human beings in the work force be able to retool for them?

      One thing was clear. Don’t count on the federal government for much help, not this crowd. In the face of compelling evidence that their supply-side miracle was a bust, they continued pushing their “starve government” initiatives. If the Reaganites couldn’t fix the economy, they might succeed at squeezing the life out of the government.

      My other Dispatch commented on how heavily the Reaganites were promoting the financial sector – commercial banks, investment banks, savings & loans, investors, traders, speculators. Experts warned that as regulatory restraints fell away, the rise of financial institutions, their reach and grasp, will crown our industrial decline. There’ll be plenty of money to be made, not in factories but office towers where intangibles are invented, churned and spun. If this sounds like juggling, it is – gambling in all but name, the casino economy.

      I discussed the prospect of a futures market in crude oil. Already supporting futures trading in cheese, poultry and plywood, the New York Mercantile Exchange had recently expanded to home heating oil and gasoline and was said to be preparing for trading in contracts for future deliveries of crude oil. This would permit speculators who haven’t the slightest interest in possessing an actual barrel of oil to exert a powerful influence over the price of crude. It will very likely undermine OPEC’s pricing power, I wrote, ushering in a new era of speculation and profiteering.

      The bottom line of all this? Those who make it will really, really make it. The income gap between the captains of – you can’t say industry any more – the captains of finance and everybody else, will widen spectacularly. Fewer will have enough, many will have so much it will be beyond comprehension. To the ordinary guy, what difference if Tycoon X’s year-end bonus is $20 million or $30 million? Whether he’s worth one billion or two? I had suggested deregulation was a tool of greed, now I claimed evil twin status for this monetization of American culture. How much money you make, how big your mansion, how luxurious your car, selfishness, greed, envy – not by accident do they drive capitalism American-style. They make the system go. Of course, this is not new. What’s new is the scale and scope, and its ready embrace by those supposedly pledged to serve the public good. We have redefined “good.” That done, the rest follows.

      As I wrote these articles I grew more and more agitated. I realized it wasn’t just Paris that made me happy, but being away from the States. Distance lending perspective. My last Dispatch in the series contrasted the dedication and sacrifice represented by the Wall with the Selfish Revolution. What is happening in the United States? This is not what we fought for. This is not the country I grew up loving. One more thought. Maybe, just maybe, these bad actors will bring themselves down. Out front flaunting their power and wealth, perhaps they’ll grow so careless people will say – enough!

      Opposing letters flooded in, some unfit for a family paper. I even received one from an Undersecretary of Something or Other. Fred had always said, write it as you see it, and he had personally edited those particular articles. In fact, after the reader reaction began to set in, Fred called and said keep it up – whatever else you’re doing, you’re selling a lot of papers. Not exactly principled encouragement but good enough. Be sure to document everything, he reminded me – as long as it’s defensible we’ll let it fly. That difference between reporting and opinion... I was more careful than ever to observe that bright line.

      Diane took it badly. She accused me of being critical and cynical about what she did for a living. I said, of course not – there are investment bankers and investment bankers, and I’m sure you’re one of the good ones. Then she lit into me about her father’s new venture. “He’s trying to do something for the community and you make a mockery of him.”

      “People who make home loans, lend to local businesses, I love them. It’s the predators I have a problem with.”

      “You could have made that clearer.”

      “Next time I will.”

      Full disclosure – I won’t say I wasn’t interested in money. With a family depending on me, I wanted not merely to survive but do well. Thanks to my efforts and a father who struggled and finally broke through, I was doing all right. But accumulation for its own sake had always turned me off, nearly as much as accumulators.

      At a year-end lunch Didier took me aside and told me it was official, I was off business reporting. In the afterglow of 60 Minutes I had spoken with Tom O’Connor about lightening up on my business reporting and shifting into general news, politics, international, that sort of thing, though still with the Franco-American flavor. Interestingly, Tom told me I would be reporting directly to him from now on. Since my scope would now be so broad (read: ill-defined) it no longer fit Fred’s or Harlan’s portfolios. I suspected he also wanted to keep tabs on my increasingly candid Dispatches.

      One other piece of advice I was mulling over. After the screening Alan Mauro took me aside and told me I ought to get an agent. “An agent!” I said. “What in the world for?”

      “You’re a property, man! You’ll need help with those big contracts people are going to be waving at you. Just don’t tell Tom who gave you the idea.”

      “Time enough if and when,” I told him. But then, there were those calls from Latimer and every once in a while I got a feeler, nothing specific, more like nosing around... maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

      FOLLOWING BREZHNEV’S DEATH IN NOVEMBER, Yuri Andropov became Soviet General Secretary. The West was apprehensive, given his role in the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, then as head of the KGB in crushing 1968’s “Prague Spring.” With a hand from Marty and Alan, I reported on reaction in U.S. emigré communities. Then, less than three months in his new position, Andropov was felled by kidney disease which would plague him the rest of his life. Despite Andropov’s alarming resumé, he authorized the longtime Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, to explore the possibility of arms control negotiations and, we learned later, the new Secretary of State, George Shultz, arranged a face-to-face meeting for him with Ronald Reagan, the first time Reagan had met a high-ranking Soviet official.

      In March, Reagan made

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