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Wait, what? Shouldn’t this post be named 2012 in hindsight if any hindsight was to be mentioned? When I started to write up a summary of 2012 I stumbled upon the post I wrote for last new years eve but I then forgot to publish so with that said I thought – why not start the 2012 hindisght with what happened the year before. When reading it through it struck me that there was many events of 2011 which has already almost forgotten. So without further ado, there is 2011 in hindsight to give some perspective before we look at 2012.
2012; a new year and a new time. 2011 came and went faster then I was ready for it. It was a year packed with events both on a personal level and in media and the world saw things never seen before.
Social media showed its teeth during what was to be called the Arab spring. Using simple services the people had a way of rallying quick and even when the services they used became blocked the services continued to shine. Before 2011 social media was still seen as a way of sharing information no one needed but by the start of 2012 it is a weapon of mass destruction which most countries now look upon with scared eyes.
March 11 at 2:46 PM JST the earth shook in the ocean outside of Japan. It shook in shallow waters and did so for about six minutes and the power of the shake was so strong that it tilted the earth’s axis by a fraction. The earthquake was destructive enough but the aftermath of it was what will be remembered the most. A massive tsunami was created by the ocean earthquake which scraped away all in it’s path. Technology centric as Japan is it did not take long until the pictures started to roll out where people in awe could follow the event as it was unfolding. Not long after it was evident that a large nuclear plant had been badly damaged and the workers at the plant worked day and night to stop a disaster. The event killed 15,840 people and left 3,926 more missing.
Barack Obama on May 1 announced that a military operation, executed in Pakistan, had found and executed the founder and leader of Al-Qaeda. Soon there after a picture was published of the room in which all commanders sat with a direct video feed to the soldiers. In real time they could follow what happened and the expressions of their faces showed feelings they perhaps had not meant to show.
The same day I was leaving work for my summer’s vacation news started to roll out of an explosion in the capital of Norway, Oslo. Since we were travelling for a couple of hours towards our summer house I kept updated and with shock me and my girlfriend listened to the reports pouring in. About the same time we arrived and sat down for a meal in the evening new report came of a second attack outside of Oslo. The realization of a synchronized attack was shocking not us but all onlookers. The morning after the situation was clearing and it was a fact that July 22nd, seventy-six people lost their life.
In late summer pictures from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was shown for the world. These pictures showed dried up canals, most likely created by water in a liquid form. In the midst of uprisings, protests and problems; there was a hint of a world beyond our own. A potential new home for the future generations. (For referece: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20110804.html)
The world lost a man who has been called the Da Vinci of our time October 5th. With a vision and a commitment Steve Paul Jobs created, lead and invented products that has changed our world. He rose, was struck down, ridiculed and forgotten about. Rose from the ashes and became an icon for entrepreneurs and buisnesses all over the world. He was mourned all over the world while his last words echoed into infinity; “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.” Steve Jobs became 56 years old and Mona Simpson mentioned something I will take with me for the rest of my life.
“Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.” –Mona Simpsson, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/mona-simpsons-eulogy-for-steve-jobs.html
So with the new year it calls for new goals. My main goal for 2012 is to give in to my own creativity in greater scale then I’ve done before. Write more words, take more photos and read more books.
2012 is the year of creativity, the start of something new.