Well, this has been an interesting year, in some senses I’m glad it’s over. I also feel a sense of some foreboding about next year. Maybe it’s the darkening nights, the shadows lengthen and grow…
This year saw us take another hit in the financial system, in truth the problems never went away, just glossed over with loads of printed money. Of course, you can’t keep doing that; as a very wise man said “Ye cannae change the laws of physics!” How very true, we are about to find this out.
We’ve seen the whole software patents story take turn after turn. Apple vs Samsung, then Apple vs HTC. I can’t shake the feeling that Apple might just have entered an arse kicking contest with a Centipede here, but time will tell. But the interesting one could be Barnes and Noble vs Microsoft, this seems to be a far more interesting story as B&N take aim not at the patents but at the strategy of using them. Clever, and also something that could be very disruptive. We have the SOPA act still being fought in the US, this could easily wreck the Internet as we know it and the potential effect of freedom of speech and fair use is chilling. A short video here explains things.
Finally, the Occupy movement. This has been fascinating to watch, and eye opening. In fact, just as bemusingly, the suicidegirls.com twitter feed turned out to have better US coverage than the mainstream media! Outdone by a software porn site, hang your heads sirs, hang your heads. I except Al Jazeera and Russia Today from this, I consistently find some very good stuff on both those sites Occupy has started to show the hypocrisy at the heart of some quarters of the Western establishment, tactics were used on American and UK citizens that were not in keeping with anyone’s idea of the response of a democracy. Though the fact that it had to come to this speaks volumes.
For 2012? Well, I’m not much with the old crystal ball. But, I’ll give it a whirl. I see us living more within our means, this won’t be such a bad thing as the alternative simply stores up more trouble. Better to start now. I can see the software patent system coming into disrepute very quickly, and I suspect that the tech landscape could look a bit different this time next year. The patent war is to the death, and I wonder about how the current hegemonies will hold up. For freedom of speech and SOPA, I recommend paying the Electronic Frontier Foundation (or EFF) a visit and doing some reading to see what can be done. The internet is not taking this lying down however, and I think that the industry lobbyists and their pet politicians are going have more of a fight on their hands than they realise.
Occupy.. I can see more trouble on the horizon. Especially in the USA, the controversial Detainee Bill promises more grief for the occupiers. I honestly can’t understand how Barack Obama let this one past him, I can only hope someone comes to their senses while there are still any freedoms left worth defending in America.
