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Summary of the Year in Ideas, 2003, from The New York Times Magazine

Extract of the 67 keenest ideas The New York Times Magazine could find for 2o03. It’s interesting to me that I had run across about a third of them during the course of the year.

Here’s how it works:

Each December, The New York Times Magazine looks back at the year through an unusual lens: ideas. We send out a team of researchers and reporters to investigate the latest thinking in every subject imaginable — not just war, medicine and politics but also cosmetics, literary theory and Wiffle-ball technology — and to bring back the most innovative, intriguing, mystifying and promising ideas they can find. Then we boil that vast intellectual stew down to the issue you hold in your hands: an alphabetical encyclopedia of the 67 inventions, breakthroughs and theories (big and small, nice and nasty) that made a difference in 2003.

1) Proving You’re Human
2) The Projection Keyboard
3) The Instantly Passé Trend
4) PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
5) Post-Belief Christianity
6) The Pod Car
7) Offloading Your Memories
8) The Nicotini
9) Iraq, Outsourced
10) News Guarantees
11) The Jules Verne Project
12) Junk Food Is Good for You
13) New Tools for an Occupation
14) Mind Over Matter, for Real
15) Makeup for Men
16) Kid Power
17) Labor Disputes Can Be Deadly for Consumers
18) Tornado in a Can
19) The Real Man’s Wiffle Ball
20) Translucent Leather
21) Tribute Bands in Denial
22) Turning Garbage Into Oil
23) Turnout Wins Elections
24) Ultracams
25) Unjuicing Golf
26) Video-Game Art
27) Young Success Means Early Death
28) The Time Gap
29) The Thunder Run
30) Theory Is Finished
31) Theater for One
32) Text Messager’s Thumb
33) Suspended Nationhood
34) Spray-On Stockings
35) Social Networks
36) The See-Through Coat
37) Sampling Bob Griese
38) Quiet Parties
39) The Homeland-Security Neighborhood Watch
40) The Drought-Proof Lawn
41) Darknets
42) Coincidence Theory
43) Civil Disobedience Against Affirmative Action
44) Body Language Reveals All
45) Bite-Size Nukes
46) Billboards That Know You
47) Biblical Taxation
48) Airborne Humans
49) Cinema Meets Real Life
50) Gratitude Visits
51) The Cancer Vaccine
52) Injectable Beauty
53) Hit Song Science
54) The Hammock Doesn’t Work Anymore
55) G.P.S. Art
56) Give Felons the Vote
57) G.I. Bill for College Athletes
58) Futures Markets in Everything
59) The Gray-Goo Problem
60) Forget the South
61) The Foolproof Umpire
62) The Food Simulator
63) Flop Penance
64) The Fish-Eater’s Cheat Sheet
65) Enough Debating — Let’s Start Hating
66) The Ethical Sneaker
67) Espresso You Can’t Mess Up

Source: The New York Times Magazine, December 14, 2003