We’re calling this meeting of the technology-of-the-year skeptics to order, and our first item of new business is what to call 2012. We need to fill in the blank on “2012: Year of _____” in order to allow for lots of heavy marketing throughout the remaining 49 weeks of the year.

Now, some of you attendees have made a good case for not declaring the technology of the year until the year is over. You say that only by reflecting on what was hot in, say, 2011, can we really make the judgment. But this is a January tradition, and the marketers depend on it. So can we just proceed?More...