Woman of the Year: YOU! (Time)

ByLaurel Papworth

From Time Magazine: Time’s Person of the Year: YouIn 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matterBy LEV GROSSMAN The “Great Man” theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that “the history of the…

From Time Magazine:

Time’s Person of the Year: You
In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matterBy LEV GROSSMAN

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.

it continues

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

Oh how much better to just sit and veg in front of the T.V. with a remote in hand? Anyway they answer their own qustion – read more here. But here’ the last paragraph:

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. It’s a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who’s out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you’re not just a little bit

I”d suggest we all go out and have a drink together to celebrate our new status with Time. But I’m flat out – generating content in the nature of wrapped presents for increasingly spoilt niece/nephew and skyrocketing credit card bills. Plus I’m in consumption mode – mince pies, christmas snacks and sweeties. But I could probably squeeze in a glass of chilled white. Ho Ho Ho.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

One Comment

Comments are closed.