2012
Phrases and concepts that I’m going to avoid saying in 2012:
- Discovery tool
- Algorithm
- The “new Facebook” or the “new Twitter”
- Infographic
- Hashtag
- Check-in
- Badge
Words I will begrudgingly use frequently in 2012:
- Social
- Gamification
- Visualization
- Velocity
- Engaging and immersive
I will try to remember how special, amazing and wonderful it is to be alive and an active player in helping to figure out the role of new technologies in our society - inspired by a great interview in the Paris Review with William Gibson (thanks to Kevin Kelly):
If you’d gone to a publisher in 1981 with a proposal for a science-fiction novel that consisted of a really clear and simple description of the world today, they’d have read your proposal and said, Well, it’s impossible. This is ridiculous. This doesn’t even make any sense. Granted, you have half a dozen powerful and really excellent plot drivers for that many science-fiction novels, but you can’t have them all in one novel.
…
Fossil fuels have been discovered to be destabilizing the planet’s climate, with possibly drastic consequences. There’s an epidemic, highly contagious, lethal sexual disease that destroys the human immune system, raging virtually uncontrolled throughout much of Africa. New York has been attacked by Islamist fundamentalists, who have destroyed the two tallest buildings in the city, and the United States in response has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
…
You haven’t even gotten to the Internet. By the time you were telling about the Internet, they’d be showing you the door. It’s just too much science fiction.
