1 - Big data is coming age. People are becoming more realistic about what it means, Data Science is becoming a profession, and the hype is being replaced by results.

2 - It has gotten even easier to learn how to program. Udacity, Coursera and StackExchange continue to improve. The resources available for the resourceful have multiplied.

3 - The IPO market is back. Facebook's investors no longer feel burned. Twitter's investors and employees are doing great. The better the IPO market, the more money that gets recycled into technology.

4 - We are aware of the privacy beast. Some view this as terrible. Awareness is actually the first path to fixing the problem.

5 - SF may be seeing hostility towards tech firms, but the tech scene is thriving and being welcomed with open arms in NYC, Austin, Boston, and perhaps even Tokyo.

6 - It's been a good year for gay marriage, which is the defining civil liberties battle of the day.

7 - Computer Science is a trendy major. Stanford undergrads flock to it. Harvard's cs50 competes with intro to economics as the most popular major. Every that this occurs, our technological capability as a society increases.

Yes, there are a lot of reasons for 2013 to have been crappy, but I'm optimistic about 2014.