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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

TIME's Person of the Year 2006

First of all congratulations to us, net users!!!

Taken from Time (to see the complete article click here)

"(...)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.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. 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.

And we are so ready for it. 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.

And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. 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.

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?

The answer is, you do. And 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. (...)"

4 comments:

Stran said...

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all of you that are supporting this blog by writing, commenting, reading and helping out.
You are the ones that make this more than just a dream!

Congratulations to you!!!

Matt M said...

Congratulations to you for setting the whole thing up!

Kathryn said...

Well done:)

Courtney Hamilton said...

Sorry to spoil the party here, but isn't this a bit of a come down? I'm not sure that we should be so flattered - indeed, what exactly have we done to deserve such a great honour?

According to Time magazine all this amounts to a 'revolution' - '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'.

Well, I'm sorry, I have a rather differing view as to what a 'revolution' is. I would have to agree with the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong on these matters when he argued that a 'revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another'.

So before we start patting each other on our backs, shouldn't we be more critical of such honours, for our own sakes?