Wired Magazine Top 10 Lists of the Year!

Wired Magazine has published several top ten lists, including best tech moments of 2005, worst tech moments of 2005, and the ever-entertaining top 50 robots and 10 sexiest geeks.

It was evidently a HUGE year for content control, and control in general. The best list included the defeat of the hugely unpopular broadcast flag, the integration of ABC's Lost into a video iPod friendly form, and the revamping of the Swedish PirateBay. The worst included the Sony rootkit scourge, Apple's crackdown on bloggers revealing insider secrets, TiVo's restrictions, and the recent NSA spying allegations. It was also a year marred by tragedy, with technology coming up strong with the Katrina blogs and Negroponte's 100$ laptop that was showcased at the WSIS convention in Tunis... and coming up short with Yahoo's compliance in helping track a Chinese dissident (they don't mention anything about Yahoo's attention to the ongoing struggle with how to deal with China), and PayPal blocking Katrina aid to the Red Cross. Finally, like every year before it since the dawn of civilization, sex was a headliner- with the best going to the furor over Grand Theft Auto's "Hot Coffee" adult sequence, and the worst given to the commerce department's delay of the .xxx domain.

Over the 2 month period I've been blogging, I think that somewhere in my 30 odd posts, about half of Wired's big issues were covered.... I'd say that's decent coverage given the timeframe. Since I envision blogging more (although not as consistently) over the next year, I'll make a few predictions about the big issues of next year:

1) The analog hole legislation recently introduced to the House of Representatives will face increasing discomfort. Although corporate America (the ones that earn money off content) will push for the legislation, other corporate America (the ones that earn money off services or supplementary goods) will push back.
2) Attempts to make ISPs more responsible over pretty much every facet of the content on their servers will be pushed- some reasonable (if an ISP received complains of child pornography and does not do anything about it, it can be held responsible), some in the gray area (responsible for taking allegedly copyright songs or clips down), and many unreasonable ones.
3) The Digitial Commons license will increase in popularity, but will remain outside the mainstream- it will not be until Google Library shapes up a bit more that a real debate can take place- where the pros and cons, and more importantly the confusion, of current copyright laws are on display.
4) Podcasting will have a lot more bark than bite.
5) Apple will remain victorious in its fight against insider information, despite challenges.
6) Volunteer Collective Licensing will become a reality- for a while, it'll be ugly and fraught with disagreements and legal red tape- it will also be embraced by consumers.
7) A new form of advertising will seriously challenge Google's dominance.
8) Ebay v. MercExchange will be decided in Ebay's favor.
9) The issue of whether a company can use its own laws to sue an action that took place in another country will be decided (example: lance armstrong's published comments in France denouncing an Italian biker used as grounds for the Italian courts to sue armstrong- as the act of reading the online paper justified libel). A new standard will develop limiting lawsuits from one country to another- however, it will not stop corporations from bullying the hell out of each other when it comes to copyright concerns.
10) Municipal Wi-Fi will continue to be haunted by political and economic difficulties. Broadband over power lines will continue to be haunted by technical difficulties. Both will progress, neither will reach the masses.