A few years ago, people said only old-fashioned folk wear watches. But I thought I would always wear a watch. Today I don't wear a watch. How do I find the time? Either I do without or I keep my eyes fixed on a screen that has the time in the upper-right corner. It's gotten so that I resent the fact that reality doesn't have the time in the upper-right corner.

 12/28/2011; 10:29:35 AM.   .

A housekeeping/philosophical mini-post.

The housekeeping part -- I am using Dropbox again. I've narrowed my use to keep personal stuff out of there.

The philosophical part -- We used to say the network is the computer, but I'm seeing more and more that Dropbox is the computer. Once some data is availble in my dropbox, the question of which computer does what is entirely fungible.

Just shows there's more to the story. It wasn't all set when email was invented.

 12/28/2011; 9:57:01 AM.   .

In the late 90s we wondered what the next decade would be called.

Here it is, the decade in question is now over, and we never answered the question.

Isn't that funny! Maybe that's why it feels like a lost decade. Never got a name.

Now I'm hearing people call the next year "twenty-twelve" even though this year was, as far as I'm concerned, "two thousand eleven."

Doc Searls asks if this is a trend, and I think it is. I think we'll look back and think "two thousand twelve" sounds funny.

Here's why.

We just came out of a decade that forced us, for the sake of clarity, to name the years as follows:

Two thousand one.

Two thousand two.

Etc.

Why? Because the following would have been ambiguous:

Twenty one.

Twenty two.

Etc.

But starting in 2010, there was no more ambiguity. Why did it take people this long to adjust?

I have no theory about that!

A little diversion on our way into the next year, whatever it may be called.

 12/28/2011; 9:29:57 AM.   .