Forum Moderators: phranque
Well, it's not just me. It's also Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa kid- it's Brookers, that annoying YouTube girl- it's Larry Wall, creator of the open source Perl programming language, and it's every person who has ever made a MySpace profile, every person who has syndicated an RSS feed, and every person who has made Web 2.0 a reality.
Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year is you [time.com].
In recognition of the latest era of the web- one based on user contributions and every individual's desire for shameless self promotion- Time Magazine has done something unheard of by noting the individuals who populate Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and the Web at Large with its content. It's certainly worth the attention from this media conglomerate... we, as a people, are truly coming together on the Internet as a unified, single human race... and in the process, taking back the power and putting it in the hands of the many.
Traditionally, Time's "Person of the Year" award is given in December to the man or woman (or sometimes, more than one man or woman) who changed the world the most in the year prior. In 1950, the recipient was Winston Churchill; in 1994, Pope John Paul II; in 1999, Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com); in 2001, Rudy Giuliani. "American Revolutionary" George W. Bush received it in both the year 2000 and the year 2004 (remember, it's the person who CHANGED the world the most, not necessarily making it better in the process- after all, Ayatullah Khomeini was Man of the Year in 1979). It hasn't always been a person, either- in 1969, they gave it to Middle America; in 1982, to the computer; in 1988, to Earth (not quite the same as this year's one, though- they were talking about the ball of dirt, not the people living on it).
Who knows... maybe Time is just doing all this to harness the power of buzz marketing. You know... get their name out there, try and get a little brand recognition so that people will have heard of them. Seriously, though: Time often uses their Person of the Year award to boost the sales of that particular issue, using their best material in the Person of the Year issue. IMHO, this is their best idea for the award to-date.
You can read the article for free online, along with all of the articles from the "December 25th" issue (I'm pretty sure it's already hit newsstands), and all of the articles from any previous issue of Time Magazine in history. It seems like they recognize that with the web headed the way it is, print magazines will eventually go the way of the dodo, the ribwich and the buck-fifty gallon of gasoline. We're all heading towards a world of free information for all, shared the instant that the creative process is complete.
Now we just have to try and get Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA and the video game industry on board.
BTW, being put on the cover of Time Magazine is a famous indicator that you've peaked and that it's all downhill from here.
Indeed. :)
In a year or two, Time magazine's next Internet-based topic may be: "What Happened To The World-Wide Web?"
There are now more than 100 million blogs.
2006 *is* arguably the year for this. What took so long? The web started out in the very beginning with user-generated content - that's why it's called a "home page".
Though invented by scientists to make it easier to communitate with other scientists, personal home-pages were very much part of the web near the very beginning, (this is from personal memory, as there were about 50 websites when I first downloaded Mosaic) but faded from view as e-commerce took over.
Welcome back to us!
p.s. Perhaps this is the best viral marketing campaign ever - for the phone company! I have already made two congratulatory phone calls, myself...
In a year or two, Time magazine's next Internet-based topic may be: "What Happened To The World-Wide Web?"
Hardly. I honestly believe we're headed toward more standardized delivery of information, taken from trusted aggregators (a la Wikipedia). In other words, you'll go to one website to compare products from all merchants everywhere (probably going to be owned by Google), and the same website will be able to let you compare virtually ANY characteristics between the products that you'd like. The same site will probably host your television, music, movies and encyclopedias, as well as social networking, your e-mail, your home page content, your collegiate research whitepapers, etc, etc- all interconnected to form the Semantic Web.
Web 3.0, if you will.
The upside of this is that things like e-mail spam and search spam will be a thing of the past, as all content will be somewhat moderated (probably by a highly advanced set of Beyesian filters). Not to mention that it will probably be entirely free to use and host the content, and probably even free to access it (high speed wifi for everyone, Mountain View CA style).
The downside is that unless you're getting into the game now (or- more likely- five years ago), you're probably never going to catch up with Google. They already have every book ever written in their database, worldwide reach, the financial resources, and the personal information of just about every Internet user out there, to name a few things. Which means that for the future, we're looking at one company holding a monopoly on the most valuable resource in existence: information.
Knowledge really IS power, eh?
you'll go to one website to compare products from all merchants everywhere (probably going to be owned by Google)
I sure hope they have something better than Froogle up their sleeves...
The last thing the old guard wants is net neutrality and open communication ..and at least one search engine G is in spite of it's remarks over net neutrality ..busy making alliances with the forces that are trying to put the genie back in the bottle ..
or at least decide who gets to see what ..based upon where they are ..
[edited by: Leosghost at 2:50 pm (utc) on Dec. 19, 2006]
