My Library

and wherefore's of my future behavior. Since 1972, the name of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) has been changed to SRI International. SRI is located in Menlo Park, California not far from the southernmost tip of San Francisco Bay, and, more or less, is on the Western side of what is known as Silicon Valley, one of the largest research preserves in the world. This is a vast outspread collective of private and corporate research facilities which reaches eastward, includes many towns, and ultimately incorporates San Jose. So thickly populated are all of these towns that there is no visible demarcation between them except road signs. But Silicon Valley proper also would incorporate the entire Bay area and include San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities to the north. Impressive freeways have been constructed on the edges of the towns for speedy access to the various research installations. The main drag that links them centrally is El Camino Real. Menlo Park itself had a small town atmosphere, somewhat sleepy and "laid back." In a certain sense, it was a place one would pass through, hardly noticing it, to get somewhere else except that SRI was there SRI, often described as the nation's second largest "think tank" after the Rand Corporation. The facility sat on about thirteen acres of land, formerly occupied by fruit tree orchards, and under which ran a branch of the great San Andreas earthquake fault. The thirteen acres were mostly composed of a collection of two/three-story buildings and rather large parking areas to accommodate the moving vehicles of all who worked there. In 1972, I was told that there were about 3,200 such workers, composed of scientists, administrative echelons, support staffs, maintenance and security personnel. The various branches of science research activities were somewhat separated into various buildings, or