This is awesome. The Time Person of the Year for 2006 is You.
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.
[snip]
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. 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 and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.
I really see this as a sign of change. I’ve long had a problem with the Person of the Year concept. At best, it’s annoying pop journalism drivel; at worst, it perpetuates the hierarchical one-to-many idolatry of Special People and Heroes that I’ve hated in our culture even before I considered myself a media activist/thinker/consultant.
Time is recognizing in a very real way that what happened in the past few years is special and important. That because of our new tools and models, power and change are distributed and contributed instead of passed down from above.
One wonders who the person of the year will be next year… back to Very Important Politician/Philanthropist? Of course, I would like to see this as a declaration of “no more persons of the year! it’s over and we are glad!”.
But overall, kudos to Time.
As an aside, Dan Gillmor made the excellent observation that Time chose to say “You” instead of “Us”, ironically perpetuating the separation between provider and receiver that this year’s person of the year was theoretically aiming to dismantle.
Although, to be fair, You is singular, and it could be seen as meaning “anyone who picks up this magazine, including people who work at Time”. So if the person of the year had been “Y’All” or “Yous Guys”, Gillmor would have more of a point. :-p
