TIME Person of the Year: You
by Pamela LeaveyYes, indeed the TIME Person Of The Year is YOU.
“You control the Information Age.” You, all of you who make a difference out there on the World Wide Web, You are the TIME Person Of The Year:
The “Great Man” theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.
“Who are these people,” TIME asks who are out there participating in this great global experiment called the Internet? Who are these people who blog about their lives or their candidates or the state of the nation? Who has time to do all of this, who?
The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.
Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.
But that’s what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There’s no road map for how an organism that’s not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person…
Who’s talking about YOU?
Arianna Huffington captured the essence…
You are the magazine’s Person of the Year. Well, actually not You personally — but all the Yous that make up the collective Us who are using or creating content on the Internet — or, as Time has dubbed us, the “citizens of the new digital democracy”.
So pop open a bottle of champagne, take a bow…
But wait, Gun Toting Liberal says his Person of the Year is Joe! Say it ain’t Joe…
And, Gaius on Blue Crab Boulevard says, “I Surf, Therefore I Am.”
Larry McShane reports in AP News:
The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals – citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.
Hat’s off to all of You! You are the reason why we (the Dem Daily) are here.
UPDATE: This post has been linked on Memeorandum.
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Well, by Golly, I think they GOT IT this year.
Unlike many folks who still don’t see the potential power of the Internet and the need to organize a little to really harness it and get us where we want to go, not where the ‘weaker links’ might well take us.
And many folks who are still avoiding the web (not to mention computers) and want to stay tuned to our grossly dysfunctional media.
I will point out that Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media deserves a specific mention by identifying this in 2004, and defining it as a many to many exchange of information, creating the most democratic form in the history of man.
I also heartily support Slate’s choice of S.R. Sidarth – at least as far as this country is concerned.
Darn, it’s Sunday, the only day of the week Colorado is reliably blue… so it will have to be a Jack D instead of bubbly.
Weeeeee! They heart us! My first choice for person of the year was Keith Olbermann. But I guess this will work just as well.