twenty-os

As we close in on January 1, every media company is rolling out their super-special synopsis of the past 10 years. Even Wikipedia is getting into the game. Here's their summary:

The decade has been dominated by several wide-ranging topics, including international trade and a growing concern over energy supplies; the explosion in telecommunications and data communications; the ecological crisis; a widespread economic failure in the last quarter of the decade; further integration and dependence on technology; concerns with international terrorism and war; natural disasters, including the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; an escalation of the social issues of the 1990s, and the debate over how to address global warming.

Are we sure this wasn't the decade when the world ended? That might be the most depressing paragraph I've ever read in my life. I'm counting 25 different synonyms for "catastrophe." They even came up with a way of negatively portraying developments in the digital sphere by calling it "dependence on technology."

But most of the article is actually dedicated to an even more pressing crisis: What to name the 2000s. The 80s, 90s — those are colloquial terms for decades. But "the 2000s" is just awkward, so there are all sorts of options being proposed like, "the aughts," "the nils" and "the Twenty-Os". Twenty-Os? That's even more awkward. It sounds like a cereal. Though at least then the name would be as big of a mess as the decade is.

I think Wikipedia wants to call it "Judgment Decade".

[via Kottke]