Ignore those year-end stories

Peter Kafka at All Things Digital believes that those look back/look forward pieces are a colossal waste of time (and despite spending many hours putting those babies together over the years, I would tend to agree).

We know what happened in the last 12 months. Really. It wasn't that long ago. No need to remind us. We don't know what's going to happen in the next 12 months. Why pretend otherwise? When we do pretend to know what's going to happen, no one's paying attention anyway. You're probably not reading this right now! I'm not -- I'm off for the rest of the year, and when I do go online this week, I'm going to try very hard to avoid filler pieces like this. Because no one's paying attention, no one ever, ever holds anyone accountable for their errant fortune telling.

Actually, the year-ahead forecasts are not completely worthless. Depending on who does the forecasting, they offer a best-guess outlook that's often reasonably accurate. What they don't do very well is predict major turning points, most recently in 2007 and 2008.