It’s hard to believe that the holiday season has come and gone so quickly. As the New Year approaches, I’m as remiss as anyone in keeping New Year’s resolutions. Nevertheless, I still make them with the best of intentions, albeit more as guidelines than concrete plans of action.

Still, like many people, I like looking back at the previous year and reflecting upon all that has happened. Rarely has it been exotic or dramatic, either inwardly or outwardly, but it has usually shown change of some sort. Sometimes it’s been growth as new directions have opened fresh paths. Occasionally, it’s been retrenchment when something else has died away. Pruning, if you will, with hopes of a better shape in the end. But sometimes, it has just been loss.

This coming year promises more personal time to pursue and direct projects that I find of interest and I’m looking forward to that. The last few years have been busy directing others’ business priorities, and while I’ve enjoyed it, there is so little time…and so much I want to do.

The past few months I’ve been catching up in a variety of science and technology fields as I ponder trends and growth in areas that I find significant. While the technology is always interesting in and of itself, I remain most interested in the moral and ethical questions around its use in our public and private lives. Technology is the great enabler-but what should we be enabling?

So, as the New Year approaches, I’m optimistic on many fronts, even as I remain cautious about our collective abilities to keep this whole civilization thing that we do afloat in a manner that is both sustainable and able to provide the greatest good for the greatest numbers.

Here’s wishing everyone a happy New Year with blessings and hopes for all of us…