Had something of an epiphany recently, while writing a leader column on crypto-currencies for the magazine eForex.
   
I've written on this subject before (and intend to do so again), and I'm used to seeing Bitcoin discussed in terms of: whether a currency is viable without a central bank behind it; whether criminal usage invalidates a currency; whether upward volatility presages downward volatility. What I haven't done is move away from the financial community, which is looking at crypto-currencies exclusively as a potential trading pair with the US dollar, and visit the development community.

It's not that there are exchanges, but that there are people discussing crypto-currencies purely in terms of their day-to-day utility. I think it's interesting, as we all drone on about the financial recovery, austerity, blah, blah, that there are people who have given up on waiting for the patient to recover. They're the young-ish people building the modern world, the IT and the infrastructure and the social media and all the rest of it, and they're working out their own methods of paying each other.

When the (un)employment statistics come out, particularly youth unemployment, I like to glance across at the numbers of young people setting up their own businesses. They're not waiting for us to help them. As the grown-ups drone on about problems that never seem to get solved, the next generation is shedding all that stuff like a snake sheds a skin.

Employers, politicians, bankers and other would-be authority figures don't have the role that they think they have in the next generation's lives. 

Way back in the stone age, somebody noticed that lists work on magazine covers. Then everybody went online, and now we're all trying to catch each other's attention. With lists.

To celebrate the arrival in my inbox of <Steve Jobs's 7 Rules for Working the Media> (Google it, why don't you?), I offer this personal list of lists you can safely ignore.

1. Any list that isn't limited to 3, 7 or 10 items. 5 is sort of okay, but any other number is just silly.

2. Any list that tells you how to behave on social media. If you haven't got that by now, it's too late. The evidence is out there.

3. Any list of obscure foods that will make you fatter, thinner, healthier, more beautiful. Don't eat rubbish, do take exercise. That's it.

4. Any list that makes you feel bad about anything you do. You're human. Treat others the way you'd like them to treat you. Treat yourself with the same respect. That's it.

5. Any list that's all about "should" and never about "could". It's your life. Live it your way.

6. Any list with a celebrity name on it. They didn't succeed that way; they just want you to think they had a plan. It's always luck, talent and persistence. Three things.

7. Any list that doesn't make you smile.

8. You guessed it. This list.