Today marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Apple iPhone. With all the headlines being written today about how the device changed the world forever, it is easy to forget that before its launch, plenty of experts scoffed at the idea that Steve Jobs and Apple had any chance of successfully breaking into the seemingly mature mobile phone market.

After all, those were the days when BlackBerry, Palm, Motorola, and Microsoft were on everyone’s minds. Perhaps, then, it wasn’t so surprising to hear predictions like these leading up to and following the launch of the iPhone:

• In December 2006, Palm CEO Ed Colligan summarily dismissed the idea that a traditional personal computing company could compete in the smartphone business. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
• In January 2007, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laughed off the prospect of an expensive smartphone without a keyboard having a chance in the marketplace as follows: “Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that’s the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good e-mail machine.”
• In March 2007, computing industry pundit John C. Dvorak argued that “Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone” since “There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.” Dvorak believed the mobile handset business was already locked up by the era’s major players. “This is not an emerging business. In fact it’s gone so far that it’s in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.”

A decade after these predictions were made, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry have been decimated by the rise of Apple as well as Google (which actually purchased Motorola in the midst of it all). And Microsoft still struggles with mobile even though they are still a player in the field. Rarely have Joseph Schumpeter’s “perennial gales of creative destruction” blown harder than they have in the mobile sector over this 10 year period.

The lesson here is pretty clear. As Yogi Berra once quipped: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But there’s more to it than just that. These mistaken predictions serve as a classic example of those with a static snapshot mentality disregarding the potential for new entry and technological disruption to shake things up. “In dealing with disruptive technologies leading to new markets,” says Clayton M. Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, “researchers and business planners have consistently dismal records.”

This has implications not only for business forecasting but also for public policy, which is notoriously shortsighted when it comes to the potential for new technological innovations to shake up existing markets. Just because you think a particular firm or sector it the proverbial “King of the Hill” one day, it doesn’t mean they will be able to sit on that lofty perch forever. Likewise, policymakers cannot neatly “plan progress” by incessantly intervening in the hope of directing markets and technologies toward some supposedly better end. Picking winners and losers–or even just trying to stimulate more “winners”–will likely end very badly.

In his book,  The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-three Years, the futurist Herman Kahn wisely noted that:

History is likely to write scenarios that most observers would find implausible not only prospectively but sometimes, even in retrospect. Many sequences of events seem plausible now only because they have actually occurred; a man who knew no history might not believe any. Future events may not be drawn from the restricted list of those we have learned are possible; we should expect to go on being surprised.

But we can only “expect to go on being surprised” by leaving plenty of breathing room for the evolution of markets and technology. While all social and economic experiments are accompanied by a great deal of unpredictability and disruption, history indicates that most of those experiments will result in greater progress and prosperity–just as the iPhone did. But developments such as these are almost impossible to predict or plan beforehand. We have to get the environment for innovation right and then let creative minds work their magic.

Over at Silicon Alley Insider, Gregory Galant has a wonderful post about “18 Awesome Tech Things We Didn’t Have 10 Years Ago.” It serves as another great example of the amazing technological progress we have witnessed over the past decade.  He’s asking people for suggestions for what else should be on the list, so head over there and let him know. Seems like wi-fi technologies should be on there somehow. FiOS deserves a shout-out, too. And where’s Firefox & Chrome? Also, I’ll put in a special word for some amazing new home theater technologies: high-def flat-screens and projectors; media servers & Windows Media Center; BluRay; and 3 incredible gaming / media consoles (Wii, PS3, & XBox). Anyway, here’s Galant’s list:

Wikipedia Gmail Facebook YouTube Twitter AdWords Amazon AWS RSS (started in ‘99 but didn’t catch on till the ’00s) Meetup iPod Google Maps Podcasts Mint Skype/VOIP iPhone Google Docs Creative Commons Flickr

So, did the decade just end or do we have another year to go? Honestly, I’ve never understood when the cut-off is from one decade to the next. (My friend Larry Magid struggles with the same question in his recent column on “The Decade in Technology.”) Nonetheless, I’ve seen a lot of best-of-decade lists published recently, so I thought I would throw my own out there even though it is still a work in progress.

I have been attempting to compile the definitive bibliography for our digital decade—the definitive list of Internet policy books, that is. I started throwing this together two years ago when I was penning my list of “The Most Important Internet Policy Books of 2008” and continued to work on it as I was finishing up my 2009 installment as well. I grabbed every book off my shelf that dealt with the future of the Internet and the impact the Digital Revolution is having on our lives, culture, and economy and threw the title and a link onto this list. (I’m also using the list to help structure my thoughts for a forthcoming book of my own on Internet Optimists vs. Pessimists, something I’ve been writing a lot about here in recent years.)

Below you will find what I’ve got so far. There are around 80 90 books on the list. I’ve divided the list by year, but you may be wondering what determined the order the books appear in. In essence, I’ve listed what I feel are the 1 or 2 most important titles first and then just added others randomly. Eventually, I plan to post a “Most Important Internet Policy Books of the Decade” list outlining which titles I believe have been the most influential. I suspect I’ll name Benkler’s Wealth of Networks to the top slot followed closely by Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet, Lessig’s Free Culture, and Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. Anyway, that’s for another day.

For now, I would just like to ask for reader suggestions regarding what other titles that should appear on this list. I will add titles as they come in. I want to stress, however, that I am trying to keep this list limited to books that have something to say about Internet policy (cyber-law, digital economics, information technology politics, etc).

I hope others find this useful.  And yes, I have read all most of the books on this list!  As I’ve noted here before, I’m a bit of book nerd.  (Now that I’ve received so many helpful additions to the list, there are some titles on the list I have not had a chance to read through yet).

2000

• George Gilder – Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World
• Christopher T. Marsden (ed.) – Regulating the Global Information Society
• Bruce Schneier – Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World

2001

• Cass Sunstein – Republic.com
• Lawrence Lessig – The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
• Michael Lewis – Next: The Future Just Happened
• Debora L. Spar – Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth form the Compass to the Internet
• Siva Vaidhyanathan – Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity
• Jessica Litman – Digital Copyright
• Manuel Castells – The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society
• Steven Levy – Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government–Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
• Jeffrey H. Rohlfs – Bandwagon Effects in High-Technology Industries
• Marjorie Heins – Not in Front of the Children: “Indecency,” Censorship and the Innocence of Youth
• National Research Council – Youth, Pornography and the Internet
• National Research Council – Global Networks and Local Values
• Paulina Borsook – Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech

2002

• David Weinberger – Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
• Howard Reingold – Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
• Milton L. Mueller – Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace
• Richard A. Spinello – Regulating Cyberspace: The Policies and Technologies of Control
• Stan Liebowitz – Re-Thinking the Network Economy: The True Forces that Drive the Digital Marketplace
• Adam D. Thierer & Clyde Wayne Crews (eds.) – Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age

2003

• Mike Godwin – Cyber Rights : Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age
• Lorrie Faith Cranor & Steven S. Wildman (eds.) – Rethinking Rights and Regulations: Institutional Responses to New Communication Technologies
• Adam D. Thierer & Clyde Wayne Crews (eds.) – Who Rules the Net?: Internet Governance and Jurisdiction
• Shanthi Kalathil & Taylor C. Boas – Open Networks, Closed regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule
• William Landes and Richard Posner – The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law

2004

• Lawrence Lessig – Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
• Dan Gillmor – We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People
• William W. Fisher – Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment
• Joe Trippi – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything
• Siva Vaidhyanathan –  The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System
• Steven Weber – The Success of Open Source
• Alexander R. Galloway – Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization
• Michael A. Einhorn – Media, Technology, and Copyright: Integrating Law and Economics

2005

• John Battelle – The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
• Edward Castronova – Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
• Jonathan E. Nuechterlein & Philip J. Weiser – Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age

2006

• Yochai Benkler – The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
• Chris Anderson – The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
• Jack Goldsmith & Tim Wu – Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World
• Henry Jenkins – Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
• Lawrence Lessig – Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0
• Cass Sunstein – Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge
• Daniel J. Solove, Marc Rotenberg & Paul M. Schwartz – Privacy, Information and Technology
• Ori Brafman & Rod A. Beckstrom – The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

2007

• Andrew Keen – The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture
• Daniel Solove – The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
• Glenn Reynolds – An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths
• David Weinberger – Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
• National Research Council – Toward a Safer and More Secure Cyberspace
• Tarleton Gillespie – Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture
• Steve Talbott – Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines
• Jeff Chester – Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy
• Nancy E. Willard – Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly

2008

• Jonathan Zittrain – The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It
• John Palfrey & Urs Gasser – Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
• Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations
• Nick Carr – The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
• Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain (eds.) – Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering
• Daniel Solove – Understanding Privacy
• Jeanne Pia Mifsud Bonnici – Self-Regulation in Cyberspace
• James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer – Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk
• Michele Boldrin & David K. Levine – Against Intellectual Monopoly
• Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams – Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
• Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis – Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion
• Lee Siegel – Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
• Lawrence Lessig – Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
• David Singh Grewal – Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization
• Michael Heller – The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives
• Matt Mason – The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
• David Friedman – Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World
• Cory Doctorow — Content
• Don Tapscott — Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World
• Neil Netanel – Copyright’s Paradox
• Mark Bauerlein- The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)

2009

• Chris Anderson – Free: The Future of a Radical Price
• Larry Downes – The Laws of Disruption: Chaos and Control in Your Virtual Future
• Dawn C. Nunziato – Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age
• David Bollier – Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own
• David Post – In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace
• Dennis Baron – A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution
• Mark Helprin – Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto
• William Patry – Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars
• John Freeman – The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox
• Gary Reback – Free the Market!  Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive
• Lee A. Bygrave & Jon Bing (eds) – Internet Governance: Infrastructure and Institutions
• Manuel Castells – Communication Power
• Tyler Cowen – Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World
• Randall Stross – Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know
• Ken Auletta – Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
• Jeff Jarvis – What Would Google Do?
• John W. Dozier Jr. and Sue Scheff – Google Bomb
• James Boyle – The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
• Scott Rosenberg – Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters
• Erik Brynjolfsson & Adam Saunders – Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology is Reshaping the Economy
• Matthew Scott Hindman – The Myth of Digital Democracy

UPDATE (Dec. 2010): If you believe 2010 should be included in this list, here’s a list of the major books from that year.

My friend Larry Magid, a technology columnist for CBS News.com and others, has a wonderful new column out about “The Decade in Technology.”  You have to read it to appreciate just how far we have come in such a short time. Larry notes:

[T]he past 10 years were a momentous period for technology.  Not only was there no iPhone a decade ago, there was hardly anything that could be considered a smartphone. The BlackBerry was introduced in 1999, when the well-heeled techno-savvy were carrying around flip phones. That year, 1999, was the height of the dot-com boom. But when you look back at it, the online world was nothing like it is today. There was no Facebook (founded in 2004) or Twitter (2007). Even MySpace wasn’t founded until 2003. The term Web 2.0 hadn’t been coined and most people who were online used the Web mostly to consume information. Those with the skills and resources to post to the Web were called “Webmasters.” Today, everyone with a Facebook account is a master of his or her own Web.

I tried to document the incredible technological changes in my own life over the past decade in this essay I penned on Super Bowl Sunday last February: “10 Years Ago Today… (Thinking About Technological Progress).”

Larry also notes that giants came and went as technology continued to evolve in unexpected ways:

Ten years ago AOL was the most popular Internet service provider and was so successful that it was able to purchase media giant Time Warner in January 2000 for $182 billion in stock. But the marriage didn’t make it through the decade. The two companies formally split up this month, with AOL, once again, being traded on the New York Stock Exchange as a separate company. AOL thrived in the ’90s because people were using the service to go online via phone. Today most American homes have broadband.

That’s something I wrote about at length in my recent paper on “A Brief History of Media Merger Hysteria.”  Anyway, read Larry’s entire piece. It really drives home how lucky we are to be living in the midst of such at technological renaissance and information cornucopia.