This week's NY Times Magazine is the annual Year in Ideas Issue. This is my favorite issue of the whole year. And this one is the tenth anniversary.
The whole thing is worth a read, but I've done the work so you don't have to. Here's my picks for stuff that is most relevant to us:
Cybercom: (What the Pentagon is -- and is not -- doing to secure the internet.)
The Long-Life-Span Smartphone: (Interesting as smartphones get more and more ubiquitous.)
Emotional Spell Check: (Fascinating idea that you could have something to check your email for "tone." Posits that some companies could prevent you from sending a message that violates their "tone policy." Ugh.)
Social Network as Social Index: (Interesting all around, especially the quote about using social networks for market research.)
Lebron James's "Decision": (While noting that James screwed this up, it just shows the ongoing erosion of establishment media. We all own the printing presses now.)
The making of the cover with a QR code made out of balloons: (I confess I still don't understand what the heck these codes do and I just figured out how to read them, but the cover is very cool.)
Virginia Heffernan's Medium Column is on Tor, a system for sharing information anonymously: (Very interesting and very cool.)
In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm: (Thinking about thinking. Plus, watch consultants who get up to $500,000 per month! Oh, and this one contains a good media relations lesson. Never, never, never ask a journalist not to write about something. Not only will that guarantee that they will write about it, but will also guarantee that you will be quoted asking them not to write about.)
A Physicist Solves the City: (Fascinating anyway, but mostly interesting for the part at the end where the physicist applies some of what he has learned about cities to corporations.