The iPod, the flip phone, and then 2007 - the year the room changed.
The CD tower falls to a white rectangle with a click wheel. The digital camera peaks, the GPS barks directions, the Roomba bumps the furniture - and in 2007 a phone with one button arrives and quietly begins absorbing the camera, the map, the jukebox, and the mailbox.
The smartphone, 2007 - the gadget that ended the gadget shelf.
The towers fall on live television and two wars follow; in 2008 the economy repeats 1929 in high definition. The decade is bookended by a Tuesday morning and a Monday crash.
A soldier on a third deployment, a first-generation kid with a scholarship and a flip phone, a homeowner underwater - the decade's averages hide all three.