James Corbett

The last year before the decade began, the total annual market for mobile phones was 285 million units, and the world had a little over 500 million mobile phone subscribers globally. Nokia sold about 77 milllion phones that last year before the decade began. Since January 1, 2000, over the past decade, Nokia has shipped a total of 2.7 Billion mobile phones. It is by far the most widely spread technology brand of all time, in the pockets of 1.38 Billion people today, or in the hands of literally one out of every five people on the planet. Not adults, not households. All people from babies to great grandparents. There is a currently active used Nokia branded phone for literally 20% of the planet. - James Corbett

Ray Schroeder gave it a try last semester at the University of Illinois at Springfield, one of the first colleges to use Wave for online teaching since the preview version came out in September. For about two weeks in December, he joined his "Internet in American Life" course with a class on energy studies at the Institute of Technology at Sligo, in Ireland. They created a "wave" to discuss the impact of the Internet on energy sustainability. - James Corbett

A generation of young people is growing up with no concept of life without a screen and a keypad. At home, at school, on the bus, in the street – wherever they are, they're plugged in and hooked up. With its instant links and global reach, the web is a miracle – but also a trap. It enables kids to feel part of a greater whole while simultaneously removing them from their immediate surroundings. The story Baden's photos tell is one any parent of teenage children will recognise. It's a story of absorption and withdrawal, of contact in the virtual world and solitude in the real one. The kids are there and yet they're not. - James Corbett