AquaMinds Weblog

I've been reading and pondering the various end of the year "top ten" lists that publications highlight to summarize the last 12 months.  They are predictable choices like most years although this year will go down in history for some notable first time events.  One such list that got my attention was Wired's Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008 which was cleverly disguised by its title.  Actually, it was in fact a consumer "gadget" list while mostly touted devices or services related to digital technology for personal use.  Hardly what one would expect as breakthrough technology.

But it got me thinking about what was the most attention grabbing headline this year that I truly considered a scientific or technological breakthrough which stuck in my brain.  From my way of thinking, a real breakthrough would either demonstrate a significant milestone in our fundamental understanding of the underlying science behind the discovery and/or it would show the way to a potentially game-changing future in which the resulting applied technology would benefit the greatest number of humans. Simply put,  my metric was set on finding a technological breakthrough at the civilization or global level for positive change.

The #1 Technology Breakthrough of 2008
If you want to learn more about my top choice for technology breakthrough of 2008, open this web notebook and turn to page 87 to watch the presentation or download the notebook document (requires OS X) that I generated from using the ClusterSearch Dashboard widget (a free web agent utility available on our site or from Apple's site).

2008 and beyond - the buzzword is infrastructure
In the weeks and months ahead, the United States and the world will be discussing the need for rebuilding our communities and nations via infrastructure investments.  Traditional infrastructure spending typically means roads, highways, bridges and public works projects to improve the overall quality of life and productivity of the citizenry.  Also included in the nation's infrastructure wish list is networking infrastructure to modernize our power/energy transmission grids, to use more fiber optic lines within our communities to extend broadband capacity and to adopt a more intelligent approach to the networking of national information services (patient information system like the National VA Hospital system).  From magazines to newspaper thought leaders like Thomas Friedman, the nation's action item list is the hot topic of the month.  What's on your infrastructure wish-list?

Collaborative lists and notes
Many of my blog posts are about collaborative list building and sharing outlines using NoteShare and NoteTaker.  Today's blog theme about ranked lists and making national priorities raised another question that probably deserves a separate post but it certainly deserves attention.  Collaboration is a learned or acquired skill if not a formal, systematic process for teams.  If you're part of a workgroup or a project team that depends upon sharing information, building lists, making outlines to organize tasks and assigning responsibilities then you've probably tried several different tools or approaches.  If you're already a NoteShare user or accessing a NoteShare Server from your desktop or your webtop,  then you know how useful a shared notebook is to a project team staying organized.  Instead of files and emails flying around, you have a central information hub organized as your project notebook.  That's the power of using NoteShare.    One of our goals in 2009 is to make collaborative list building and note-taking even more ubiquitous.  And, most importantly, even easier to get started.

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