You can tell a lot about an era by the gadgets it spawns. In the mid-'70s, two must-have items were the mood ring and the pet rock (both of which I owned, courtesy of my fad-sustaining mom). Although both of these product niches flared out in fairly short order, I think they reflected some common values of the time – at least in America. Both embodied the “Me Decade” mantra that Novelist Tom Wolfe coined to describe the passive … [Read more...]