Must have been a slow year in technology.

  Time = Marky Z
  O'reilly = Twitter

Both technologies seem ultimately centered on selfish desires of people to want the minutia of their lives to be found interesting by others (Twitter especially).

I would've thought both Time and O'reilly would've named something with a little more of a net positive on society.

The highest purpose of any technology, whether microblogging or semiconductor fabrication equipment, is to improve human lives.

One can make arguments on both sides about whether Facebook and Twitter are net positives or net negatives on society. However, given the sheer scale of their userbases, and the amount of those users' time they choose to spend on these services, if FB/Twitter usage is even mildly positive in net impact, the total impact dwarfs other more "hardcore" technology products.

Yeah, but Michelin year after year leaves McDonalds off its ratings.

Improve human lives? How come? I think Word Lens is a better "technology" than twitter

Surely Android has had a more impactful year than twitter? It really is hard to pin down one thing isn't it?:)

Calling Android the technology of the year is to take sides in an ongoing war. This would put O'Reilly in an unfavorable position with Apple.

Has O'Reilly really been solid for a while, though? I realized recently that the last O'Reilly book I cared about was "Programming Collective Intelligence" (and that one is flaky) - I haven't actually /liked/ an O'Reilly book since Perl was big. O'Reilly has a lot of reputation, but I've been much happier with No Starch (_Land of Lisp_, etc.), Morgan Kaufman, etc., and anything Brian Kernighan has ever touched. (Either he has the CS midas touch, or he's the world's best tech writer. I'm thinking BOTH.) My wife is currently using my Unix manuals to weigh down recently-glued carpet on our basement steps though.

(and I've wondered about it because I feel inclined to spell-check "O'Reilly" every single time)

In terms of technical publications, Morgan Kaufman, Prentice Hall and Addison Wesley are far more superior. But O'Reilly has Tim's personal brand behind it, and he has proven himself to be a visionary by betting on Unix early, then noticing the Free Software movement and fully embracing it. Then going on to godfather two editions of the web (bubble.)

Think of O'Reilly as the "Virgin" airlines of Richard Branson, compared to the classics, like British Airways or Lufthansa.

Yes, I too double check the spelling often.

In other news, a lot of people are using Google to search the Internet.