Image by Timothy K Hamilton (Flickr)
2010 is finally here and as part of New Year’s Resolution, I’m going to try to update more often. In my effort to do so, I decided to start out the year by starting the decade. Many people have looked back at 2009, and pinpointed the highlights that made it great (and not so great). I could do that too, commenting on Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. But I feel to generalize more, looking back at the decade. In some ways it’s easier to talk about a decade, because it’s more about the trends than the specifics, but than again, we’re talking about a ten times longer period of time (that’s why it’s called a decade). After much thought (mostly in the shower and sometimes in bed), I pinpointed what made this decade what it really is: Web 2.0, Google, and iTunes on Windows. Those three things are the sugar, spice, and everything nice of 2000s’ tech. Let me explain further. Web 2.0. For some, it’s the biggest buzzword of the 2000s. Before Web 2.0, the internet was about static webpages filled with annoying GIFs and awful background music. It seemed like almost everyone had one. It was the dot-com boom, but unfortunately (and in some ways, thankfully), it burst. Nowadays, we live in the era of Web 2.0 – dynamic webpages that personalize to us. Login to Amazon, and somehow it knows what we want, giving us personalized recommendations based on what we saw, just like a personal shopping assistant. Web 2.0 is also about interaction between you and your peers. With a click of a few buttons, you can share that adorable video of your kitten (or your heavily sedated child) on YouTube. Want to connect with your long-lost cousin somewhere in the middle of Africa? Facebook is your answer. Speaking of Facebook, these last few years of the decade also gave rise to a new social gaming economy with games like Mafia Wars and Farmville. Web 2.0 realizes YOU are important, and will do anything to recognize that. No wonder YOU were Time’s Person of the Year back in 2006, you’re just too important. The twenty-tens will be about reaching Web 3.0. There’s no exact definition of what that is, but I think it’s safe to say that it will involve the web knowing you better than you know yourself. Obviously, Google’s probably already there. Sometime during 2009, the popular, funny, and fake news source The Onion, released a video about the imaginary Google Opt-Out Village [link]. It was a Google Service where you are sent to a remote village in the middle of nowhere, a quaint place where Google couldn’t track you. Of course, you aren’t able to use the internet because that defeats the whole purpose. Eventually you would realize that you need Google to survive, and you were let out. The Onion pinpoints exactly where Google is today. If you have “gone Google,” like 60% of the Fortune 500 companies, Google practically owns your life. The search box we all of have grown accustomed to probably tells more about ourselves than our very own diaries do. If you use every single Google service, than Google probably has your search history, e-mail, calendar, documents, voice mail, videos, foreign language homework, photos, videos, health records, website, blog, financial portfolio, and credit card information, just to name a few. In the next couple of years, if not months, Google will also have your computer with their new Chrome OS. And it’s free. All supported by their monstrous AdSense economy that infects the deepest places of the interwebs. The only thing saving us from the mighty force that is Google is their famous motto: “Don’t Be Evil.” So far I have discussed the technology of the decade (Web 2.0) and the company of the decade (Google), but the last question is: what is the product of the decade? My answer is simple: if you have been paying attention, you would know it is the bloated, resource-hogging, piece of Windows freeware made by a fruit company on 1 Infinite Loop, iTunes (with a lot of emphasis on the Windows version). Why didn’t I choose the iPod? Because the iPod and Apple achieved their success because of the Windows version of iTunes. If iTunes wasn’t released for Windows, there probably wouldn’t be as many iPods as versions of Vista and 7 combined. iPods would flop, primarily because I wouldn’t be willing to pay $1000 for a computer just so I could get a personal MP3 player, when my “Windows-supported” Walkman works just fine. In a sense, iPods are like the infamous Lite apps of the App Store. They are feature limited (the one that acts like a phone is almost a computer) and significantly cheaper (couple hundred vs. couple thousand). Maybe Mr. Jobs only created iPods as a marketing stunt for their higher end products – if they were, it worked. Almost everyone has an iPod perfect for them – touch screen, colorful, talk-a-full, thick, thin, lots o’ memory, practically no memory, etc. If the rumored Apple Tablet eventually does come out, it would help Apple get more people to switch to Mac, as our lives become more Apple-centered and less Microsoft-cluttered (of course, Google would still own our lives). The 2010s have finally come (and still no flying cars or teleporters, hmmm). What this decade has in store, no one knows. Google will continue to do its thing, and Apple as well. Web 2.0 might mature and evolve into Web 3.0. As our society advances, so will our connections to those around us. Hopefully, gadgetonix will be there to report on it.
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