Now that Christmas Day is over media attention turns to not only the top stories of the year but also of the Noughties, the first decade of the millennium (yikes, was it only yesterday that we were petrified about Y2K?).

It's been a tempestuous decade. We hadn't heard of Obama in 2000. Or Osama. Or Beyoncé. Who'd have thought Harry Potter would be the fictional icon of the decade? Or that a kid golfer would dazzle the sporting world and then crash and burn at the very end?

For me, the biggest story of the Noughties is the amazing rise of "the screen." Screens -- computer screens, TV screens big and small, cellphone screens, movie screens, dashboard screens and now screens where you can read books and newspapers -- have transformed the lives of all of us.

We can't exist it seems without a screen in our pocket, in our car or in our home.

Look around your office. Everyone is looking at a computer screen instead of out the window.

Stand in an elevator. We used to avoid looking one another in the eye. Now there's no need. We just click on the iPhone or BlackBerry or start texting on our cellphones so that we don't miss a beat.

I was in a lineup for the ferry the other night and the kids in the magic wagon in front of me were all watching Shrek on the in-car movie screen. Dad, in front, was fiddling with the GPS screen.

Onboard the ferry, passengers were watching the public TVs, working on computers or watching private movies on their laptops. Some, reassuringly, read books or newspapers.

Every teenager on board seemed to be texting his or her brains out (an ugly but apt metaphor). I'm not sure teenagers know how to talk to each other any more. Txtspeak is how they now rel8.

Dal Richards, the amazing 90-year-old bandleader, was on board -- heading to Victoria for a book-signing -- and I was reassured to see him writing flamboyantly in a journal. He writes with the same flourish that he conducts. Grand and entertaining, big, wide inky curls and curves. To him, writing by hand is a symphony. For many of us, it's becoming a forgotten art.

I did the Times Colonist crossword with my son. It was the most entertaining half-hour I'd had in a while. We did it on paper. It was reassuring, tactile. And felt almost quaint.

That night, for my birthday, my wife, kids and I played games. Not Scrabble or Pictionary or Cranium, which have been part of the tradition of Christmas and birthdays, but Beatles Rock Band and the video movie game Scene-It.

I hadn't had so much fun in years, particularly watching my wife get into her own groove playing bass on Come Together and me winning Scene-It in the final frame by knowing that Peter Bogdanovich directed Paper Moon. My lap of honour around the living room while pumping my fist was, in retrospect, a tad disingenuous.

Earlier that afternoon my son and I had played Tiger Woods Golf at Turnberry in Scotland. It felt as though we were there -- well, virtually -- with the amazing graphics on our big plasma TV.

It wasn't so long ago for us Boomers that a screen meant a tiny black and white TV showing fuzzy images of Lucille Ball or Edward R. Murrow or Ed Sullivan. Now we can watch streaming full-color television on an iPhone and Avatar in 3-D.

The world, thanks to technology, is changing by the nanosecond. And though there are huge downsides -- newspapers dying, social interaction under threat, bad handwriting, BlackBerry meaning you never can hide -- I confess to not just enjoying this new technological revolution, but revelling in it.

It's opened up a world of possibilities. And our lives have changed beyond recognition this decade.

The thing is, and this is the tough part, remembering to look beyond the screen. There's a real world out there.

I've railed in the past about Wii Fit and Wii Tennis, where you leap around your living room instead of at the gym or at the tennis court.

Yes, I love Tiger Woods Golf, because it's cool, but I'd rather be playing a real Cordova Bay than a virtual St. Andrew's. But they can coexist. They do. I suck at both.

This has also been the decade of Google. It started in September 1998. But it took off into the stratosphere in the Noughties.

Now most of us can't live without it.

It all makes you wonder what lies ahead in the next decade. Hang onto your track ball. Real tight.

Ian Haysom is news director of Global News in British Columbia. He divides his week between Central Saanich and Vancouver.

ihaysom@globaltv.com