Person of the year. Yeah, right.

[mdlbear]

This year, Time Magazine picks YOU as their person of the year. Mirror on the cover and everything. Right.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

Here's some more from Reuters. Hard to tell whether this is because they really just noticed that the Internet is a communication and collaboration medium, or because they couldn't think of anyone who actually did something worthwhile this year.

Comments

[telynor.livejournal.com]

I don't feel any of the people they chose to represent me are anything like me at all.

They're not really targeting all users of the internet. They're targeting all slender and attractive users of the internet.

[mdlbear]

Slender, attractive, and young. Sounds a lot like LJ's management after the SixApart sellout. They just want to sell to the kids who set up plus accounts.

Don't get me started.