I suppose I’ll do the required new year post; reflection at the end of a decade seems to be the proper thing to do. Unlike many people, I’m not so impressed by this most obvious creation of the 2000s, the internet. It came into its own during the last 10 years, though I don’t really recognize “Web 2.0” as any sort of revolution of content. It is a revolution of how we distribute the sort of content that has been around for most of the century (the best of which is still produced by professionals). There has been a resurgence of local news reporting through blogging but that content has been around for ages; robust local news reporting did disappear for a while with the conglomeration of news organizations but that was not the case earlier in the last century. Is it better that people now can’t live without their 3G phone? I’m not sure….
We have seen a revolution in engineering and science certainly but wasn’t the internet supposed to be the catalyst for more? Some think such a change has taken place but it seems to me that our mode of thinking has not radically changed; we simply spend more time with computers instead of TVs, the papers, or with one another. Efficiency might be one thing we have gained (this is certainly the argument for web apps) but efficiency does not a revolution make.
Nothing like the 1920s and the 1960s - now those were cultural revolutions.
Though the black president thing was cool.
Hopefully we can have some new thoughts in the 2010s. At least we are supposed to hit peak oil then; that should be a blast!
(stockpile your ammunition)