18 Awesome Tech Things We Didn&#39;t Have 10 Years Ago

No decade has destroyed my business model

Paul Krugman calls this decade The Big Zero: “the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing”. Rebecca Mead at The New Yorker bemoans this decade’s lack of a name, even calling our failure to come up with a popular name a “troubling harbinger”.

When Odysseus was captured by the man-eating giant cyclopes Polyphemus, Odysseus wisely said his name was ο?τις (“no man” in English). In a daring escape plan, Odysseus and his men blinded Polyphemus by stabbing him in the eye. Polyphemus howled in pain to the other cyclops that he was blinded by “no man”. They took this to mean that the infliction was punishment from the gods, so they didn’t help him.

This decade’s brought us an amazing advances in technology, particularly on the internet. Of course with new technology comes creative destruction. Its victims seem the most distraught that there’s no name to call the decade by.

With that, I’d like to start a list of great things we didn’t have a decade year ago (in no particular order):

Wikipedia

Gmail

Facebook

YouTube

Twitter

AdWords

Amazon AWS

RSS (started in ‘99 but didn’t catch on till the ’00s)

Meetup

iPod

Google Maps

Podcasts

Mint

Skype/VOIP

iPhone

Google Docs

Creative Commons

Flickr

I don’t know about you, but I learned a lot more this decade from Wikipedia than from Paul Krugman.

Tell me if I missed anything in the comments and I’ll add them.

Gregory Galant is founder and CEO of Sawhorse Media, which makes cool sites like MuckRack and organizes the Shorty Awards. He also created and hosts Venture Voice, a podcast for and about entrepreneurs. This post was originally published on his blog, and is reprinted with permission.

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