What was going on when I was born?

New Yorkers draw an acerbic portrait of metropolitan life, but are not nearly as gloomy about the city's future as in years past, a New York Times poll has found. While 40 percent of those polled four years ago predicted the city would become a worse place in which to live as it approached the turn of the century, only 31 percent say that now. Thirty percent say it will be better, the same proportion as four years ago. And fewer residents dream of moving to more placid places. In a paradox typical of the way New Yorkers regard their city, both the residents who think New York is getting better and those who feel it is declining are more likely than their counterparts polled in 1981 to want to remain.

President Reagan today named Max M. Kampelman, a Washington lawyer with political and diplomatic experience, to head the United States delegation to the new three-part arms-control talks with the Soviet Union. In an announcement read at the White House by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, the President said that in addition to serving as the overall chairman of the delegation, Mr. Kampelman would also head the separate group discussing space weapons. Under the agreement reached by Mr. Shultz with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko last week in Geneva, the two sides agreed to hold talks on space weapons, strategic arms and medium- range missiles. Rowny Is Replaced In a move that caught arms-control officials by surprise, Mr. Reagan named John G. Tower, the former Republican Senator from Texas, to replace Edward L. Rowny as head of the group dealing with strategic arms.

President Reagan, in an interview published today, charged that some black leaders were ''committed politically'' to the Democratic Party and had distorted his record to ''keep their constituency aggrieved.'' ''I have to come to the conclusion that maybe some of those leaders are protecting some rather good positions that they have, and they can protect them better if they can keep their constituency aggrieved and believing that they have a legitimate complaint,'' Mr. Reagan said. ''If they ever become aware of the opportunities that are improving,'' he said, ''they might wonder whether they need some of those organizations.'' Mr. Reagan, who made his comments in an interview on Thursday with USA Today, did not say which black leaders he was talking about.

Public and private festivities preceding the inauguration went into full swing in Washington. Page 44. WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - The nation's capital, dressed in pageantry and snow, today began four days of festivities celebrating the second inauguration of President Reagan and Vice President Bush. Although not so grand or expensive as Mr. Reagan's first, in 1981, this inauguration will light the night sky with fireworks and salute the President and the Vice President with Hollywood entertainment, concerts, balls, youth forums, parties, exhibits and dozens of other glittering affairs.

President Reagan has decided that the Government will not take part in further World Court proceedings in Nicaragua's suit against the United States, the State Department announced today. The action marked the first time the United States has walked out of a case in the World Court, in defiance of the Court's rules, since joining the tribunal in 1946. The Court is formally known as the International Court of Justice. In a separate development, senior Administration officials said the United States had suspended the negotiations it began with Nicaragua last June over Central American security and related problems. The officials said the Nicaraguans seemed uninterested in serious exchanges. The Nicaraguan Deputy Foreign Minister deplored the suspension. (Page 4.)

The Mexican Government today rejected a plan by the International Business Machines Corporation to build a plant, wholly owned by I.B.M. without Mexican partners, to produce microcomputers here. The National Commission on Foreign Investment said it had rejected the plan to build personal computers here ''on the terms proposed by the company'' because ''there are already companies in existence that manufacture them with a majority of national capital.'' The I.B.M. proposal has been looked upon in the foreign business community as a test of the Government's stated intention to allow more flexible terms for foreign investment. Whether the plan can be revived was unclear.

A jury decided yesterday that a key paragraph in a Time magazine article about Ariel Sharon was false. The jury, which had already decided that the paragraph was defamatory, then began deliberating on whether Time published it with reckless disregard for the truth. If the jury decides that question in Mr. Sharon's favor, it would then consider whether he should be awarded damages for libel. To win a libel award, Mr. Sharon must prove that the paragraph was defamatory, false and published with reckless disregard for the truth, according to rulings by the United States Supreme Court.

A leading political opponent of the President of the Sudan was hanged in public today. The executed man, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, was the founder and leader of the Republican Brothers, a religious and political movement that opposed the establishment of traditional Islamic law in the Sudan. Mr. Taha, a practicing Moslem who was regarded as a political moderate, was 76 years old. As the trapdoor of the red steel scaffold swung open, a thousand Sudanese men in the Kober Prison courtyard here, many of them members of the extremist Moslem Brotherhood group, leaped to their feet and shouted in Arabic, ''Death to the enemy of God!''

A four-letter word hanging over her shop in Montreal's Pointe Claire suburb put Valery Ford in trouble with the Quebec authorities. The offending word was ''wool.'' Quebec's Commission for the Protection of the French Language had no quarrel with the name of Mrs. Ford's shop, Les Lainages des Petits Moutons, which translates as ''Woolens From Little Sheep.'' But by making mention of wool in English for her English-speaking customers, Mrs. Ford had violated a law specifying that all commercial signs in Quebec must be in French only.

The Reagan Administration, concerned about a growing Communist insurgency in the Philippines, is planning to ask Congress to increase the military aid portion of American security assistance, an Administration official said tonight. The official said the aid request would be submitted to Congress as part of President Reagan's budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

President Francois Mitterrand was met by thousands of jeering demonstrators today as he arrived here on a mission to promote independence for this South Pacific territory. The demonstration, which appeared to attract a substantial portion of the residents of this coastal capital of 60,000, signaled the difficult task faced by Mr. Mitterrand and his Government as France seeks to resolve a bitter conflict between parts of the indigenous Melanesian, or Kanak, population of New Caledonia, who are demanding independence from France, and the island's settlers, mostly Europeans, who are determined to keep this island a part of France. Mr. Mitterrand arrived in the capital by helicopter from the airport and went directly to the French High Commission complex, which was sealed off by hundreds of riot-equipped French security policemen. As Mr. Mitterrand's helicopter landed, demonstrators, many waving French tricolors, pressed into the streets leading to the Government complex. There, stopped by the police, they began jeering loudly.

The Indian Government has arrested at least seven officials for spying, including a secretary in Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's office, it was reported today. Press reports identified the aide in the Prime Minister's office as T. N. Kher, a personal secretary to one of Mr. Gandhi's closest assistants, P. C. Alexander.