The 10s In Review: An Occasional Series
Posted on December 1, 2019 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
Me in 2010 and in 2019.
It’s now the last month of the last year in a decade, and I suppose that means it might be a good time to collect up some thoughts on the past ten years, on both a personal and larger level. To that end, from time to time this month, basically when it crosses my mind to do so, I’ll do posts on the people, events, creative work and other notable things that I want to note before the 10s officially recede into the rear view mirror. Some of this will be specific to me and my life, and some of it will be more general.
I don’t want to overhype this intended collection of decade-end pieces, because ten years ago a grandly announced a very similar plan for the years 2000 – 2009, complete with snazzy graphic, and proceeded to not write any pieces, how embarrassing is that. This time I plan to be more low-key about it. If I’m moved to write something, I will. If not, then, well. It’s not like I wasn’t writing here over the last ten years; you can find what I was thinking about things as we went along. But I do have some thoughts on it all, if for no other reason than to help me make sense of it all for myself, so I suspect there will be at least a few pieces before the end of the month.
I will note — and I think this should be fairly obvious if you’ve been following along here at all in the last decade — that the 10s were a pretty good decade for me personally. Not without its challenges, certainly, but one that on a personal and professional level brought a measure of success and contentment. This is contrasted, I think, with a larger more general trend away from contentment. This division was interesting to experience and not entirely comfortable in its implications, and I imagine this dichotomy will thread itself into the pieces. I expect I will leaven these thoughts with “decade in review” posts of cats and sunsets, however, so there is that, at least.
In any event, this is my plan for December. Let’s see how it plays out.
My late uncle, an engineer, was always very precise. One of his sore points was people who misidentified the starts and ends of decades.
He noted the the first century began with year 1, not year 0. (And it was the first century, not the ‘zeroth’). Thus, each decade after began with the year numbered 1, in the present case, 2011.
Consequently, the final year of the 2nd decade of the 21st century will be 2020, not 2019.
I know this is an annoying nit to pick, but I REALLY don’t want to see another decade marred by the current US government.
Ken:
I would tell you to don’t be that guy, but it’s too late, you’ve already been that guy.
And also, I and everyone else who is not actually an engineer is gonna go ahead and do it this way.
Yes, because the change of year – eg, from 10s to 20s – is far more visually significant. I think occasional life reviews are a good idea, and it helps if they have a ‘peg’ of some kind. I look forward to any entries on this subject.
(Anyway, this calendar wasn’t in use in the first century, and nobody is in a position to prescribe when it began. You could say it began with the birth of Jesus around 4BC* or it began in the year zero, which historians call 1 BC for reasons all their own. Not only do you get to do what you want – but the engineers have no beef with it. And the October Revolution took place on November 7. Meh.)
*Meaning the first century was 103 years long by that reckoning – don’t blame me.
@Ken So your uncle missed all the parties?
It was a great decade for the old scalzi also.
I hope you won’t think I’m trying to hijack your thread (but I guess I am), but I wrote up something about the decade/millennium crapola on my blog a few years back. Short answer: the pedants are wrong: When do the teens end? (Or, I guess you could say that I’m out-pedanting the pedants.)
Ken, please note that OGH called this “The 10s In Review…”. While 2020 is the final year of the second decade of the 21st century it is not a part of “The 10s”, which is the decade he’s reviewing.
Your engineer uncle would probably appreciate precision in reading as much as in writing.
I was “going to be that person”, and I am an engineer. So don’t put us down for our need for accuracy.
biomade:
You know, if it bugs you (or any other engineer), you don’t have to read the posts.
Also, to avoid this comment thread bogging down on this particular pointless argument, let’s consider the matter tabled.
oh, OK. but I like reading your posts so I can live with you doing it. Being an Engineer with aixelsyd (dyslexia) and CDO (in alphabetical order) does add a certain je ne sais quoi to the how I think. BUT WOW, I got a named reply thank you.
Ten years is a significant chunk of anyone’s life. I’m interested in reading what you write about what interested/inspired/irritated you over that time.
The 10’s were a shit show. Dogged by the 2008 recession even now and a nazi frat boy as president? This decade cant get over fast enough.
The 20’s? Maybe we’ll see humans walk on the moon again, maybe we’ll send people to mars. We have seen the end of moore’s law. But perhaps we will see the dawn of quantuum computing and true AI.
The issue of course is if those AI are used to sell even more sophisticated political lie advertising to make facebook richer.
Somewhere the internet revolution morphed into the data mining personal information for profit revolution.
This is probably an odd thing to have noticed, but… John, any thoughts on why you held the camera in so much lower a position ten years ago, compared to now?
Brian:
I have a better understanding of what my good angles are now.