What was going on when I was born?

now the trick is to teach them to listen. Scientists and engineers have already made great strides toward achieving that goal. Machines are already being produced that recognize voices in a primitive way. And experts are confident that they will be able to build computers that will be competent to comprehend the human voice and carry out sophisticated spoken instructions. A number of products are being introduced that have an ability, however crude, to recognize spoken words. They are used already by quality inspectors in factories and baggage handlers in airports. Others will allow video games to be played by shouting commands, and personal computers to respond to such spoken orders as ''store'' and ''copy.'' Some of these devices, however simple-minded they are at the moment, will represent the initial consumer applications of what is considered a promising but extremely elusive technology. ''In the next two or three years there is going to be a dramatic emergence of speech recognition,'' said Janet Baker, president of Dragon Systems Inc., a company in West Newton, Mass., that specializes in speech recognition technology.

The Economy The nation's savings rate has failed to respond to the Reagan Administration's sweeping reduction in taxes. Although Americans typically have saved a bit over 6 percent of their take-home pay, by last spring, despite the economic recovery, the rate had plunged to a 33-year low of 4 percent. (Page A1.)

Terry Ehrich, an auto buff with an informal manner and easy smile, runs an $8 million-a-year magazine business. Next year, for the first time, he plans to draw up a budget. Mr. Ehrich, 42 years old, is publisher of Hemmings Motor News, a monthly resource for more than 225,000 enthusiasts of old automobiles. He also publishes two, smaller magazines, one on old automobiles, the other on small boats, plus an annual directory that lists old-car hobbyists.

There is no sign to guide the visitor, but on the outskirts of Big Spring in the dusty West Texas oil country there is a fenced-off tract of land that is a kind of cemetery of oilmen's dreams. There lie row upon row of great steel oil and gas drilling rigs and a jumble of rusting pipe, cables, drill heads, transformers and house trailers. The owner of all this is the Allied Bank of Texas in Houston, which repossessed them from two victims of the oil bust that has hit Texas: the Matagorda Drilling Company and Republic Drilling and Service. Like countless other banks, oil and gas producers, drilling contractors and oilfield equipment manufacturers, Allied is now pinning its hopes on growing signs of at least a modest recovery in the American oil patch. List of Active Rigs Growing Several hopeful trends have emerged. The weekly count of rigs that are drilling wells, as kept by the Hughes Tool Company, has risen seven weeks in a row, reaching 2,185 nationwide last Monday. This is up 21 percent from the low of 1,807 in mid- April, though still much less than half the peak at the end of 1981. Well permits issued in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana are up slightly.

Just over two years ago the Reagan Administration engineered sweeping changes in the nation's tax system and the largest tax cuts in history. The primary objective was to encourage the country to save and invest more of its income. Instead, Americans are saving less now than they did then. Since the Korean War, American consumers have typically put aside a little more than 6 percent of their take- home pay, a level well below that of other major industrial countries. Last year the personal saving rate in the United States slipped to 5.8 percent, uncommonly low during a recession, when people tend to increase their savings. And last spring, with the economic recovery well under way, the saving rate plunged to a 33-year low of 4 percent.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich went to the head of the class, but Holt, Rinehart & Winston's report card was mixed. Last week, in an annual ritual known as ''adoption,'' the State of Texas graded the nation's leading textbook publishers. In each of a half- dozen categories, from English to geometry, the textbook committee of Texas recommended five publishers for adoption, meaning that the purchase of their products by school districts will be underwritten by state funds. For the publishers, the stakes are high: Texas has budgeted almost $43 million for the purchase of new textbooks next year, and has allocated another $50 million or so for new science, mathematics and other textbooks in 1985. Purchases by Texas school districts can represent a significant share of the publishers' business.

ATLANTIC CITY FEW of the thousands of people still up at dawn on Labor Day in this resort town bothered to watch the daily miracle of the sunrise over the ocean. Most were still hunched over the gaming tables on the busiest weekend of the busiest year the casinos have ever had. And while the owners of the casinos and the public officials who collect taxes derived from them are ecstatic over the enormous increase in gambling over the last two years, therapists and social scientists who are just beginning to explore the world of addictive behavior are concerned about an accompanying increase in compulsive gambling and are intensifying their research into the reasons for it. Publicity from casinos and state lotteries focuses on big payoffs and jackpots, but little attention is normally given the losses, and what can follow: the thievery, the bankruptcies, the broken homes and ruined careers resulting from what the American Psychiatric Association terms an often serious ''pathological disorder.'' ''The availability and proximity of casinos is leading more and more people into the type of gambling behavior that's out of control,'' said Robert J. Klein, director of the New Jersey State Council on Compulsive Gambling.

''Make no mistake about it, this attack was not just against ourselves or the Republic of Korea.

After last year's late-summer surge in the stock market, this summer has been a discouraging one for investors in stocks. Nonetheless, there is a widespread expectation on Wall Street that the bull market has further to go, and that stock prices will resume their climb this fall. That optimism is based on the belief, that despite higher interest rates and looming Federal deficits, the economic recovery will continue. ''The obvious question is whether or not the recovery will be sustained, and how durable and vigorous it is going to be,'' said James Balog, senior executive vice president at Drexel Burnham Lambert. ''Where I come down is that the recovery is going to be just fine - surprisingly fine, and I expect that the market will ride upward on the wings of higher earnings.''

Because of an editing erbor, an article about Division I-AA football in SportsMonday yesterday incorrectly identified Fred Hill. He is the new baseball coach at Rutgers.

MANKATO, Minn. YOU may leave your heart in San Francisco, but if you want to save it, this quiet Midwestern city is the place to be. Currently, there is probably no city in the world where more is being done to stave off the biggest killer in industrialized societies - atherosclerosis, the underlying cause of most heart attacks and strokes. Through a federally financed research project, the 37,800 residents here and in neighboring North Mankato are involved, directly or indirectly, in an experiment to see whether an all-pervasive community-based program can help people reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke and prevent premature death and disease. A similar effort has just begun in the twin cities of Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn., and another is scheduled for Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb. In each case, the results will be compared with those in similar towns that will not be identified until the various projects are completed (in 1989 for the study here).

President Reagan said tonight that a United States reconnaissance plane passed close to a Korean passenger plane early last Thursday but landed in Alaska an hour before the Korean plane was shot down. Earlier, in a statement read by a senior Administration official that supplemented the President's remarks in his televised address to the nation, the White House said the presence of the reconnaissance plane ''some 1,000 miles and two and a half hours' flight time from the scene of the shootdown in no way excuses or explains this act, which speaks for itself.'' The issue of the Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane arose on Sunday. In the United States, senior Reagan Administration officials said that two hours before the Russians shot down a South Korean plane off its coast, the Soviet Union had spotted a United States reconnaissance plane in the general area and had apparently thouught that both aircraft were American surveillance planes. In the Soviet Union, a Soviet general implied that a Soviet fighter pilot could have confused the airliner with an RCC-135 reconnaissance plane.