New Year’s resolutions are broken by Feb, and New Year’s predictions always seem to be a lot of chest beating.  However this year’s edge question made me stop and think.  What have you changed your mind about?  It’s a much more interesting year end round up, as it requires admitting you were wrong about things in the past.

So here is my list of what I changed my mind about in 2008, please throw on your own comments, or put up your own posts and send me a link.

• Facebook has no value.  I really did think this for a long time, then a couple of high school friends found me on it, and I realized how it really helps keep together groups that have long since seperated for time and space reasons.  Writing letters is still dead, but some new form of that is popping back up in facebook.
• Non fiction books aren’t interesting, and the cliff notes give you everything you need.  After the number of times that I’d heard about disruptive technologies
  I didn’t think I needed to actually read Innovator’s Dilemma, then I
  did, while visiting Nick in WV, and realized how wrong I was about that.  A lot of what was really interesting and useful in the book never turned up in the chatter and buzz words I’d heard out of people in reference to the book.  After that I proceeded to read: The World is Flat, Blink, Here Comes Everybody, and The Big Switch.  Every one of them had some very interesting insights that I’d not gotten in the elevator pitches… insights that helped reshape how I think about certain parts of the world.
• Java.  I really used to hate Java, then in 2008 I spent 2 semesters writing JavaME code for cell phone applications.  Java looked nearly elegant in that environment.  This got me even more positive about the Android platform, and hoping Sprint gets their Android phone out soon.