Time’s “Person of the Year” for 2006 is You
Posted by Joe Lichtenberg on Tue, Dec 19, 2006 @ 01:35 PM
I think they absolutely nailed it this time. According to Time's Lev Grossman:
"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..."
Mr. Grossman calls the democratization of the web nothing short of a revolution:
"We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos-those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms-than you could from 1,000 hours of network television."
"..for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you."
The changes impact everyone from consumers who now have options to aggregate their information from any sources they want and to view it in any format they want, to publishers that are learning what it means to adapt to this change in control. Looking back years from now, we'll remember 2006 as the year that forever changed the way information on the web was created, delivered, and received.