#21 on the list: Paper. "Probably the biggest casualty of the decade. With most communication now conducted online, magazines and newspapers crumbling, and e-r

#21 on the list: Paper. "Probably the biggest casualty of the decade. With most communication now conducted online, magazines and newspapers crumbling, and e-readers increasing in popularity, paper is now on serious life support. It's likely we'll look back and say that, after a 2,000 year reign, paper was killed by the noughties." I absolutely disagree. The way we use paper is shifting, yes: Paper's domain over long-term data storage is, obviously, shaken and falling, and that's a good thing — it's bulky, wasteful, and slow to search. So, too, are the news and the paper further in sunder, as scaled communication moves further into the digital domain. But as a means and medium for thinking and creation, pen and paper are still orders of magnitude more effective than computerized tools except in very specific instances. It's possible that I'm being a luddite here, and that the generation being born now will find using a computer for the initial stages in the creative process to be more natural than pen and paper. My suspicion, though, is that this simple medium persists because we've had a lot more time to refine it — far longer than the modern computer has existed. -- As an aside, does anyone have a better term for this decade than "noughties?" I've heard it a few times and can't shake the feeling that it's awful.