Snippit: Time Person of the Year: You
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.
It’s interesting though…with all the possible candidates (Pelosi, Obama, the YouTube guys) that had been nominated early on, it feels like Time had this planned from the beginning. It’s both interesting and annoying. To think, all this time we were waiting to crown one person, any one person, because of the glamor that the title “Person Of The Year” accords, and instead, we stare right back at ourselves? It’s the same concept as the “Everybody’s a winner!” deal in competitions among young children. It’s nice to know, but doesn’t it make you feel crummy that you’re not necessarily special or unique? At least, Time Magazine doesn’t think so! It makes me wonder if they couldn’t narrow it down far enough, or if they couldn’t chose one outstanding individual for the position when they had so many on their palate.
But if you look at it another way, Time’s reducing its focus on celebrity mayhem, and instead is widening its view to include the world – this is most likely a chance for the better.
Thanks for the snippet! My Time subscription ran out between the two years, so I was left hanging.