Here's looking back at a noteworthy 2005. (You can go back to 2004, too, if you'd like to look for trends.)

We wake up thinking we know what we know, only to find that we have to think all over again.

I would create, if not true bumper stickers, then the rumor of bumper stickers.

I'm not signing anything until I read it, or someone gives me the gist of it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey -- what these four thinkers had in common was not a group of ideas, but a single idea -- an idea about ideas -- that ideas are social ... like germs.

When it needed cash, to pay employees or buy equipment or build camps, it dispatched someone from Chicago with a rucksack filled with bricks of hundred-dollar bills. "All the people in Iraq had to say is, 'We need a backpack,' Or, 'We need two backpacks.'" Each pack held half a million dollars.

Al Qaeda is not an organization. It is a scene.

Where Google looks at Web pages and links, Visible Path looks at people pathways.

Ideas should never become ideologies.

The Iranians insist the freeze is only temporary.

Futurists always measure their batting average by counting how many things they have predicted that have come true. They never count how many important things come true that they did not predict.

The entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Is more what we really need?
In my opinion not.
But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.

"We're not going to rely on agency pissants."

Too many people still mistake secrets for intelligence.

Asked what's wrong with the department, he said, "It's difficult to figure out where to start."

If you can't say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on.

The Open Source Center will study obscure sources like T-shirt slogans in countries of interest.

Just because Bill Gates is ready to pour millions of dollars into a big new idea doesn't make it a good one.

Dubai, with its Disneyesque Arab souks in which you can purchase Arab handicrafts or a Cinnabon ...

The critical question is not, "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"

Perhaps humility, more than anything, is the mark of true genius.

"It is it is our destiny," said ... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

Apple Computer has filed to trademark the phrase "Mobile Me" for use in a wide range of businesses, furthering speculation it could introduce an iPod phone.

There has also been speculation that Apple would, along with an iPod phone, resell cellular phone service provided by a cell service provider, becoming what's known as a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO.

The speculation seems pretty sound. From USPTO, entry #1:

Word Mark: MOBILE ME
Goods and Services: IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Computer services; computer data recovery; data analysis being computer services; computer programming; updating of computer software; maintenance of computer software, computer and communications networks, and computer systems; research and development of computer hardware and software; website design, creation, hosting services; customized imprinting and design of messages, correspondence and other written communication which are delivered by electronic transmission; computer on-line services for the search, retrieval, indexing and organization of data on computer and communication networks; providing use of on-line, non-downloadable software; providing use of on-line, non-downloadable software for communications via local or global communications networks, including the Internet, Intranets, Extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; analyzing data to detect, eradicate and prevent the occurrence of computer viruses; computer services relating to the protection of computer hardware, computer software, computer networks and computer systems against computer viruses, attacks, or failures; computer services for enhancing the performance, security and functionality of computer and communications networks; computer help-line services; technical support services relating to computers, computer software, telecommunications, and the Internet; consultancy and provision of information and advice relating to the aforesaid; all provided on-line from a computer database or provided from facilities on local or global communications networks, including the Internet, Intranets, Extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks

Serial Number 78785959
Filing Date January 5, 2006
Owner (APPLICANT) Apple Computer, Inc.

Entry #2:

Word Mark: MOBILE ME
Goods and Services: IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: providing digital music from local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular and satellite networks; operating chat rooms; publication of electronic books and journals from local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular and satellite networks; providing on-line electronic publications; electronic games services provided from loca... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]

Apple files 'Mobile Me' as US trademark

ACM interviews Kurzweil.

The "singularity" is a metaphor borrowed from physics, really referring to the event horizon. We can't easily see beyond the event horizon around the black hole in physics. And here with regard to this historical singularity, we can't easily see beyond that event horizon, because it's so profoundly transformative. We will literally multiple the intelligence of our civilization by merging with, and supplementing our biological intelligence, with this profoundly more capable nonbiological intelligence by a factor of billions, ultimately trillions. And that will dramatically change the nature of human civilization. That in a nutshell is what the singularity is all about.

Singularity: an interview with Ray Kurzweil

We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush administration's National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in The New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department's December 22, 2005, letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration's defense of the program.

This letter is a bit repetitive due to its structure, but the legal explanation offered here is relatively clear and concise.

On [Domestic] NSA Spying: A Letter To Congress

Britain, already the world's leader in video surveillance of its people, will soon be able to automatically track the movements of millions of cars on most of its major roads.

"It will revolutionize policing," said John Dean, the national coordinator of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system, or ANPR. "Our aim is to deny criminals the use of the roads."

They should integrate the ticketing system with mobile phones, so that if you run a red light, you immediately get a message chastizing (and fining) you for it. And maybe they could also send a message to all of your AIM buddies, too, letting them know about your dangerous ways.

What's really needed is an in-car augmented reality system that provides the ticketing and accident history for all of the drivers/cars in your immediate vicinity. And if someone's been stopped for suspicious behavior in the recent past, it would alert you to that fact, so you could keep an eye out.

Electronic Eye Grows Wider in Britain

The November - December 2005 issue of the Cook Report looks at different forms of Broadband. It describes the regulatory-political victory of the Duopoly in the United States. It examines IMS and a carrier control mechanism and then outlines Duopoly’s coming and likely IMS oriented struggle with the Application Service Providers (Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon) for control of digital networks.

Here's an idea: Search IS social networking IS Search. Google is a SNS. Not Orkut -- the Google Google. Discuss.

The New Battleground: MegaLec and IMS vs Google

This company won a bunch of end-of-year awards. Presumably they are doing something right, and this exposure is the result of more than just a well-connected executive team.

InnoCentive is an exciting web-based community matching top scientists to relevant R&D challenges facing leading companies from around the globe. We provide a powerful online forum enabling major companies to reward scientific innovation through financial incentives.

(I noticed only after posting this that it was already cited here more than three and a half years ago.)

InnoCentive

Everybody does it. Some say animals do it.

That’s where agreement ends.

I felt compelled to tell you about this story. I don't expect you to actually read it. Don't, I said!

I'm hoping the authors and the people profiled in the story will offer me lots of money in return.

Or at least maybe tell a few people about MemeStreams.

Altruism 101: What and why

You gotta laugh when the police are recommending falsification of records.

As far as Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Rocky Costa is concerned, "MySpace has absolutely exploded, and the only real way to protect ourselves -- besides filtering and firewalls -- is to always tell yourself, `I am not gonna give out authentic information.'" To kids, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology sociologist and psychologist Sherry Turkle, this is a mixed message at best. "You're encouraged not to be you, but then if you go online at a place where you shouldn't be and are not you, then we don't like it. Then, as soon as they're 18, we tell them to go to Match.com."

For millions, social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Xanga represent the perfect intersection of art, commerce and the human need to connect. Musicians, comedians and film studios use the sites to create fan bases. Advertisers buy space on them.

Yet at the same time, there's growing concern among some parents and school administrators that such Web sites encourage kids to share salacious stories and sexually charged photos and perhaps leave them vulnerable to predators. Many schools have sent notices to parents to be aware of possible problems. Others have lectured students on social etiquette and safety on the Internet.

Kids are certainly enthralled. "I know tons of people who are addicted."

If only MemeStreams supported inline images, it would be flooded with shy 11 year olds who live in Hoboken and have lame names posing as sexually aggressive 26 year olds from Manhattan with cool names. Can anyone find evidence of a MySpace identity being auctioned on eBay?

MySpace, which counts 42 million members and has surpassed eBay, Google and AOL in number of page views, is a place that invites strangers to mingle.

MemeStreams needs a link or a button on the home page that says Mingle! As for what it does -- is that important?

26? No, 11.

Esther Dyson, editor of CNET Networks' technology newsletter, writes in "Anonymity," that there is information about everyone everywhere, and that though people think they want anonymity, they are actually trading it for recognition and a voice.

Esther says reputation and anonymity are mutually exclusive.

Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig sees, in "The Public Domain," the area unregulated by copyright rules where creative work is developed and spread, being swallowed by the private domain as "the cultivation of culture and creativity" will be dictated by "those who claim to own it."

Richard N. Haass, Council of Foreign Relations president, writes in "Sovereignty" that nation-states will not disappear but sovereignty "will no longer be sanctuary" and will fall victim to the "flow of people, ideas, greenhouse gases, goods, dollars, drugs, viruses, e-mails and weapons within and across borders."

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow