I love lists and always have.  When I was a young kid, my parents gave me “The Book of Lists” and I spent days reading it.  So this time of year is one of my favorites because everyone is sharing their lists.  The end of a decade is even sweeter for list readers like me.  I’ve been reading everyone’s top 10 music lists, inventions lists and top sports plays (ESPN listed their top 10 plays of the decade and two involved the Patriots – Thanks Adam, they’re great memories).

Everything was wonderful in list land, until I ran across Paul Krugman’s opinion “The Big Zero” in The New York Times; “the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing”.  Pffst. When Odysseus and his men blinded Polyphemus by stabbing him in his eye, Polyphemus screamed that he was blinded by οὔτις (“no man”).  The other cyclops took this to mean that Polyphemus was being punished by the gods, so they did not help him.

I think we should help Polyphemus escape his punishment by the gods and list some of this decades marvelous achievement, especially on the technology front, in no meaningful order:

• Gmail
• YouTube
• RSS
• GPS handheld devices
• Google Maps
• Amazon Web Services
• Podcasts
• Skype
• BitTorrent
• Blogs

There.  I always want to publish my own end-of-year list.