On-line sharing by everyone becomes Times pick for "Person of the Year"
Personal web spaces like http://myknet.org along with others are now being recognized as key social networks ...
From http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061216/time_you_061216
Time Magazine names 'You' as person of the year
Dec. 16 2006 - CTV.ca News Staff
Time Magazine has made an an unorthodox pick for person of the year: You.
As in YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia and the other types of new media that have exploded in the past year.
"There are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006," editor Lev Grossman wrote in the publication's Dec. 25 edition.
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.
"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."
Grossman credited the World Wide Web for this, the technology that became popular about a decade ago, leading to the much-hyped dot-com boom of the late 1990s.
However, he said the Web is now in a new era.
"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."
From the home videos of YouTube to profiles on the social networking site Facebook to podcasts, Americans created like never before, he said.
"America loves its solitary geniuses-its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses-but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others," he said.
"Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux.
"We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy."
Grossman acknowledged that 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," he said.
"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 curious."
Related CTV.ca News Stories