Today is your last chance to do something useful in 2009. Tomorrow we have a new year, a new decade. To be honest this is the first decade I can fully remember. Not because I was drunk the previous ones or because I am forgetful. I was just too young to notice what happened and realize the important stuff.
Looking back at the year I have to admit that I don’t think it is special.
Michael Jackson is dead. While he was alive many people had nothing good to say about him – “He’s strange”, “pedo”, “how can you like him…” – now that he’s dead everyone loves our King of Pop. Beside the fact that you can perfectly see how changing some people are you could also see how greedy people can be. If I think about his funeral and how his father and his family tried to squeeze every last cent out if it I could vomit.
Looking back at the decade is even worse.
Okay we owned football world cup even if we did not win. But we had a great atmosphere in Germany. No one was crying about meaningless stuff (we are perfect in this discipline!), everyone was happy it was just a big 2 month party. Two weeks after this event everything was back to normal. Sad people, living their sad life in a sad country in a sad world. Looks like some people can only be happy when 11 people play football and win. Strange world…
Back to a more technical point of view. I am really not good to remember when something happened in past. That’s why I only talked about two events so far.
What did we see in 10 years?
DVDs becoming a standard and a few years later old stuff. Now we got Blu-Ray. Two new mediums in 10 years. Let’s see how this will go on.
Apple became successful. Not just for graphic designers and in America but all over the world. New systems using Intel CPUs, new iPod lines and who could I not mention iPhones.
Linux is still only used by IT-guys on desktops and some people that got a Netbook with Linux pre-installed,…
OpenSolaris entered the scene and ZFS was one of the few new things that really caught attention.
LCD displays and TVs are now found in every household and “older” people – let’s say pre 1980 – use new technology like email, internet and even IM… only to name some of those “cool new things” they thought that would be useless.
And I believe that we are still at the beginning
Do you remember those IT related movies about Hackers? Hackers, StartUP, Password Swordfish,.. only to name three big ones. Do you remember the stunning user interfaces and gadgets Tom Cruise had in Minority Report?
All devices ware able to communicate with each other. You just plug a stick or disk in your system point at the movie and it starts playing.
It was something that was not possible or at least realistic for private consumers.
Time changed. I believe that we’ll see a lot more beautiful designed, easy to use computer systems that are capable of all this cool stuff we’ve seen in movies for years.
iPhones showed that touch interaction is bigger than most companies believed. Apple will go down the road and deliver a TablePC. The next step is done. Waiting for a iMac with touch input,… (time to spread some rumors 
)
I wish you all a great party – let’s see what the next year and next decade will bring.