And voice-control easily the feature I'm most drawn to right now when I start looking covetously at other, more advanced, less diesel-powered Androids and iPhones. (Yes, this Mac fanboy is tempted by Android... even though my investment in iOS apps probably exceeds my retirement savings. Those things better appreciate in resale value over time, or my retirement isn't going to come much before age 103.)

Well, probably not. But maybe the best thing about advances in mundane tasks is the way they free us to use the truly sexy features that technology has offered us for years: creating, writing, connecting, and yeah, cartooning. The truth is, I'm so far from making full use of the creative power of well-established digital networked technology that lusting after the cutting-edge stuff makes little sense for me. That is, unless I can rationalize that it's to unlock more time and attention to creative endeavour.

Fortunately, rationalization is one of the skills I've practised the most in this business. Just 424 days to go.

Rationalize spending some time browsing through the full Noise to Signal archives, right here!

Let's add another mistake to that list: silence.

I'm not sure there's a force on earth that could have saved Susan G. Komen for the Cure from the social media firestorm that engulfed the organization this week. But lord knows their communications strategy didn't do them a lot of favors - starting with their initial silence.

Back when the main communication vehicles were things like ads and news media, you could often take a good long time before pushing out a news release or sending a spokesperson out for a scrum. Not any more.

Two things can help if you find yourself in the Komen situation - especially if you need some time to gather the facts, reflect on your position and decide on your next move.

First, a crisis communication plan. Thinking about possible scenarios and developing a strategy for each one - including who responds, how and in what channel - means you don't have to do that thinking when your fight-or-flight mechanism is competing with your higher reasoning functions for attention.

And second, an honest temporizing response. Replying to people that you understand how important the issue is to them, and promising them a more complete response within a few hours or days, and then delivering on that promise with a sincere and direct reply, can give you and your colleagues the time to move beyond a reactive, defensive response to a more effective one.

What won't work is wishful thinking. Planning based on the assumption that nobody will notice what you've done - or that when they do, they'll give you the benefit of the doubt - is some of the best fuel a firestorm could ask for.

Find more fuel for your next social media firestorm at the complete Noise to Signal cartoon archive.

So I can understand why I'll get the odd "TL;DR" in response. And I try not to take it personally; instead, I look on it as a reminder to pare my text down, murder my darlings and generally indulge myself a little less.

On a bad day, I mourn the rapid decline of human civilization, curse people's can't-be-bothered-to-read-anything-longer-than-a-tweet mentality, and generally grumble about "kids these days". I imagine scenarios where the instructions for disarming a doomsday weapon are three paragraphs long, and nobody on the planet has the attention span required to get through them.

And I'm finding my bad days now outnumber my good days by about five to one, and rising.

In fact, there are times when I...

No! Wait! Don't go - the post is almost over! You've nearly made it to the cartoon! All that's left is the "you-can-find-more-Noise-to-Signal-cartoons-at-Rob's-web-site" and you're there!

Votes on both bills are now delayed indefinitely. (Or, to put it in terms the MPAA would understand, they're in development hell.) Former sponsors are now fleeing for higher ground; the bills' supporters are fodder for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Big media will try again, and again, and again, and judging from the contempt that industry representatives expressed for the bills' opponents, their next foray won't be much more enlightened than this one. And both Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Lamar Smith released statements that stressed entertainment industry jobs but made no mention of the economic importance of the Internet. (Each made passing reference to "innovation." This, in 2012, represents progress.)

"We should delight in the stand we've taken in favor of things like, say, notifications, and trials, and proof before censoring someone," Clay Shirky wrote this week, "but we should get ready to do it again next year, and the year after that. The risk now is not that SOPA will pass. The risk is that we'll think we've won."

True. Sobering. And important.

But in the meantime, if you blacked out your blog, slapped a banner on your avatar, wrote a letter to the editor, or contacted a Senator or House Representative to let them know where you stand, you can take a little pleasure and pride in what you've accomplished. And then let's work to turn this success into the enduring, effective movement we'll need to make it last.

You can find hundreds more Noise to Signal cartoons here.

P.S. I'm in Canada, but I still took Noise to Signal offline on the 18th. The ramifications of SOPA/PIPA go well beyond American borders, I have plenty of American readers (and friends)... but most of all, I love the open Web, and I don't like to see it threatened.

No surprise, then, that Morgan Stanley analysts are getting plenty of news coverage this week for predictions of a March iPad 3 release and a June iPhone 5. They join plenty of other pundits, and the predictions are more or less coalescing around quad-core chips, a higher resolution screen for the iPad and a slimmer profile for the iPhone.

Except that I get it. I understand the appeal. For a lot of us, speculating about the next iPhone's processor or whether the iPad's touch-screen will be pressure-sensitive (yes, fine, I'm the only one speculating about that) or what the next version of Android will offer is about more than just speed ratings or raw performance. It's about what we can do with the new features or increased power of the device: what we'll be able to create, how we'll be able to collaborate, and how we can foster richer and more satisfying connections with each other.

OK, it's also about whether the next version of Angry Birds will be able to have 3D-rendered shadows and photo-realistic explosions. But it's also about that humanity-lofty stuff, too.

See more Noise to Signal cartoons

Whatever the reason, it at least suggests that in a world so often dominated by metrics and conversions, we're still up for a little introspection. Especially if it leads to an embeddable web badge. I take comfort from that.

Happy new year, all.

But their sweetest vengeance, the schadiest of schadenfreudes has to be the moment when it dawns on each of us that, having created a blog, Twitter feed or YouTube channel, we have to feed the damn thing with content.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

If you start taking this stuff seriously, then the voraciousness of the content beast can be all-consuming. That struck home in Larry Carlat's essay in last week's New York Times magazine, about how his Twitter addiction cost him everything.

None of his symptoms resonated until this one: "When I wasn't on Twitter, I would compose faux aphorisms that I might use later."

Gulp. Oh, god. Yeah, I've done that. Worse, I've been the jackass who stops after saying something in a conversation, and then says out loud that I should remember to tweet that.

Apparently offline conversations and relationships aren't just fodder for online content streams, just as cats and accident-prone children aren't just props for mad-viral YouTube videos. They serve other purposes as well, and as soon as I find out what those purposes are, I'll tweet them.

And less than two weeks after I ran a cartoon here about Reddit's popular AMA (Ask Me Anything) discussion threads, committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren held an AMA discussing SOPA. (Concidence?! ... Yes, almost certainly. But still.)

So, American cousins — have you contacted Congress yet? And if so, which side have you come down on? (As for where I stand, you can probably guess from the cartoon.)

More Noise to Signal cartoons available here (unless some drastically wrong-minded legislation happens to pass)

Sometimes it doesn't take any contemplation at all; Facebook should feel downright embarrassed about pushing "frictionless sharing". (No, I'm not drawing that one - at least not here. This is a family site, bub.)

And don't get me started on HTTP status codes - although, sadly, it's the client errors that seem the most compelling. Between 417 ("Expectation Failed"), 405 ("Method Not Allowed") and 429 ("Too Many Requests"), they tell the story of two tragically incompatible people who should never have hooked up in the first place. "And when he woke up the next morning, she was 410."

Find more Noise to Signal cartoons here

I visited a few of those Facebook Pages and Twitter feeds, and most of them actually do have an active presence: tweets, updates and content designed to engage me.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

What they lacked, with one or two exceptions, is people - a name, a photo, a human face to attach to all that Content™ and Engagement®. I had no idea who I was dealing with.

Absent a personal identity to relate to, I have to assume that I'm talking to The Brand: a mix of carefully-crafted informality and meticulously-planned spontaneity. And maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't want to be friends with a brand.

You?

More Noise to Signal.

It's also one of the most fascinating things the web's offered in a while - which, given that it's entirely text-based, is pretty remarkable.

The results are often glimpses into worlds we often don't see; as I write this, an IAmA from a man who "was in a BDSM 24/7 total power exchange relationship for 3 years" is having a frank discussion with a few dozen Redditors (including a few admirably measured responses). Or maybe you might have enjoyed "IAmA Nerfer - I mod Nerf guns for enhanced function and occasionally alter appearance for costume pieces." Or "I am youtube user Cotter548, AKA the inventor of the Rickroll. AMA."

It's not all wonderful. Some IAmA's don't catch fire, and most get their share of dumb comments and idle banter. But the actual conversation, particularly from the subject of the IAmA, is often riveting.

Sometimes the appeal is voyeurism. Sometimes it's the chance to open up to someone who shares some deeply personal pain of yours.

But mostly, when it works well, it's because IAmA lets us connect with another person on some of their most interesting terrain, or broadens our understanding of a phenomenon of the moment. I was one of those who was blown away by Zach Wahls, the 19-year-old whose articulate, powerful defence of his two mothers became a viral rallying point for supporters of marriage equality. Coming across his IAmA was a little like actually getting to meet the guy.

We get very taken with technologically intensive ways of making digital conversation more appealing and engaging. But it's worth remembering that some of the most compelling interactions we have — whether they're in tomorrow's 1080p 3D video with aroma-enabled augmented reality, or the kind of extended plain-text comment thread I could have read 30 years ago on dial-up — are the ones that let us share a little of each other's authentic lives.

First, you can do Cyber Monday in your pyjamas. Hell, you can do it with no clothes at all. Black Friday (as the court order the mall sent me makes very clear) is not pants-optional.

Third... well, actually, I'm right back to number one. If I'm going to engage in naked consumerism, then dammit, let it be naked consumerism.

See more Noise to Signal cartoons here. Most of them were drawn while Rob was more or less fully clothed.

But their sweetest vengeance, the schadiest of schadenfreudes has to be the moment when it dawns on each of us that, having created a blog, Twitter feed or YouTube channel, we have to feed the damn thing with content.

None of his symptoms resonated until this one: "When I wasn't on Twitter, I would compose faux aphorisms that I might use later."

Gulp. Oh, god. Yeah, I've done that. Worse, I've been the jackass who stops after saying something in a conversation, and then says out loud that I should remember to tweet that.

Apparently offline conversations and relationships aren't just fodder for online content streams, just as cats and accident-prone children aren't just props for mad-viral YouTube videos. They serve other purposes as well, and as soon as I find out what those purposes are, I'll tweet them.

For me, this is one of those things that triggers the same surge of admiration, awe and vicarious terror that I have when I hear the words "So, we had our ultrasound and it's triplets."

But there's also the excitement of building something new and amazing that wasn't there before, something that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you, something that could change the world for the better. Maybe in a small way, maybe in a big one.

And that's what makes it worth the risk, whether the venture you're talking about is commercial, social, scientific or artistic.

Good luck with the triplets, Marshall.

The greatest movie of all time, Demolition Man, taught us that in the future every restaurant will be Taco Bell.

What they missed was that everything else will be Angry Birds. Here's the tally to date, as far as I can tell:

Find more Noise to Signal cartoons here.