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Some of my favorite posts (by me) of 2013
It has be a wonderful year in technology — a year of change, a year of disruptions, a year of disappointments and of course a year of surprises. It was also the year I was perhaps least prolific compared to earlier years. If anything 2013 was the year when I made a slow transition from contently being in rapid-write/break-news mode to a more paced and column like approach to writing. It is not to say I didn’t try and break news — did that often enough — but the longer form posts give me more satisfaction.
The ground work done in 2013 will help me prepare for a more essay/column oriented writing I want to pursue in the future. As you may (or may not) have noticed that I have started writing a column for FastCompany magazine — my first one was about the coming era of magical computing — and it has exposed me to a different tempo of organizing my thoughts, thinking through ideas and writing with a much longer term perspective.
I am picking out some of my favorite posts of 2013. I picked them because they highlighted a few major themes that emerged over past 12 months.
- Technology is being slowly embedded in all aspects of society and it is no surprise that many traditional non-tech companies are buying their way into Silicon Valley.
- The challenges of the connected future are less technical and more legislative, political and philosophical — and data is part of that future.
- We live in a data rich, almost data polluted world. In this world we are going to need the equivalent of a digital bauhuas — and experience design is going to be part of it.
- The future of media – how we create it, consume it and monetize it – is very different from our long held conceptions. What is not different: value of attention.
In no particular order my dozen picks for 2013:
- A new Babylon and the rise of the tech tycoon
- ZipCar, Google & the inevitability of the Internet.
- The new guard: look who’s buying tech companies now.
- Disruption, it moves in mysterious ways + 2013: a good year in tech
- Data? What is it good for? Absolutely…. something
- Uber, Data darwinism and the future of work. More Data Darwinism
- Coffee and Empathy: Why data without soul is meaningless
- Instagram ads and the future of brand advertising
- Square, Airbnb and why experience really is design
- Day traders, angels and venture capital: The internet changes everything, including money
- How the New York Times can fight BuzzFeed & reinvent it future
- Eight years later, Google reinvents its Maps for a data rich web
There are six others posts from 2013, that aren’t necessarily part of a theme. They are also not essays, except I just liked writing them.
- Dennis Crowley and the cycle of second-guessing
- New Startup economics: Why Amazon (web services) and Dropbox need each other.
- In 12 years of blogging, the more things change, the more they stay the same
- HTC and the harsh reality of the Android Ecosystem
- Zimmermann’s Law: PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder Phil Zimmermann on the surveillance society.
- To live and die in public: That’s Twitter.
4 thoughts on this post
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my fav, of course, shoes.
The politics might get interesting instead of just frustrating. Political economy has generally defined the Democrats owned by Wall Street and Republicans owned by Big Oil. The Dems certainly have the market cornered on Technocrats – though there is no historic requirement for loyalty to that party.
Reblogged this on Visibility Shift and commented:
This post, by one of my favorite bloggers, Om Malik, gives you an “at a glance” perspective of the past year in social media and technology — and where it’s heading next in the future. With the irrational exuberance of the #Twitter IPO this week, expect more startups and more technologies and companies that layer on top of Social Media. It’s a new “dot com” boom and I’d call it “Web 3.0.” Those who understand social media will profit the most in this coming wave — if you have a lot of social followers and influence today, you will be one of the Oprahs and Arianna Huffingtons of tomorrow.
bauhuas -> Bauhaus