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'Person of the Year' is you
17/12/2006 13:49 - (SA)
New York - You were named Time magazine
"Person of the Year" on Saturday for the explosive growth and
influence of user-generated internet content such as blogs,
video-file sharing site YouTube and social network MySpace.
"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 magazine's Lev Grossman wrote.
The magazine has put a mirror on the cover of its "Person
of the Year" issue, released on Monday, "because it literally
reflects the idea that you, not us, are transforming the
information age," editor Richard Stengel said in a statement.
You beat out candidates including Iran's President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, China's President Hu Jintao, North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il and James Baker, the former US Secretary of State
who led Washington's bipartisan Iraq Study Group.
Time has been naming its person of the year since 1927 and
the tradition has become the source of speculation every year,
as well as controversy over unpopular choices such as Adolf
Hitler in 1938 and Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
The aim is to pick "the person or persons who most affected
the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what
was important about the year, for better or for worse".
Grossman said the creators and consumers of user-generated
Internet sites showed a community and collaboration on a scale
never seen before.
"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,"
said Grossman, Time's technology writer and book critic.
"The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide
web," he said. "It's a tool for bringing together the small
contributions of millions of people and making them matter."
MySpace - bought by media giant News Corp last year for
$580m - has more than 130 million users around the
world and adds around 300,000 members a day, while YouTube -
bought by internet search leader Google last month for
$1.65bn - gets about 100 million daily views.
"These blogs and videos bring events to the rest of us in
ways that are often more immediate and authentic than
traditional media," Stengel said.
"Journalists once had the exclusive province of taking
people to places they'd never been. But now a mother in Baghdad
with a videophone can let you see a roadside bombing or a
patron in a nightclub can show you a racist rant by a famous
comedian," he said.
Time's 2005 Person of the Year was the richest man in the
world, Bill Gates, his wife Melinda, and Irish rocker Bono for
being Good Samaritans, while the 2004 choice was US President
George W Bush. In 2003 "The American Soldier" graced the cover
in a year when US troops invaded Iraq.
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