Congratulations, YOU are Time’s Person of the Year
Funny. I don’t feel like Time’s (excuse me TIME’s) Man–oops–Person of the Year. But I am. For the flood of user-created content on the internet the magazine named those creators the People of the Year.
The transformative promise of the internet is finally reaching its potential. Free, open source software is challenging Microsoft’s dominant position. TiVo and YouTube are precursors for a television age where all content is viewed on-demand and some of it might become only pay-per-view (see the NFL Network’s battle with the cable companies). Weblogs and podcasts turn people just yelling at the the news or a talk radio host into a pundit. Media and its audience are merging. The boundaries between content producer and consumer vanish.
It’s a breakdown of barriers, but also a breakdown of privacy and personal space. Sometimes it’s voluntary; sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s intentional; sometimes it’s accidental. Sen. George Allen and Michael Richards wish YouTube wasn’t around. The “Star Wars Kid” certainly wishes his schoolmates hadn’t released an embarrassing clip onto the net.
The abundance of user-created media is burying us in an information overload. There are so many “cool” video clips to watch, so many weblogs to read, so many auction items and classified ads to pour through. We’re hard pressed to keep up with the deluge. News junkies like myself think a few hours away from the internet means being a whole news cycle behind in the blogosphere. Right now, we’re making more content then our collective mind can process. As witnessed by Google’s soaring stock price helping people cap off the infostream into gulpable amounts will mean future business success.
Yet all this technology unleashes creativity. The next Steven Spielberg is tooling away with his parent’s video camera and a computer he installed linux on. The next Bill Gates is poking around the linux source code seeing how it ticks to he can make it do exactly what he wants it to do. Such play and curiosity is as empowering as those teens in the 50s and 60s tinkering around with their rot rods.
We’re at the stage of human history where Andy Warhol was right: everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes…or at least for one YouTube clip. Pat yourself on the back. You are making the present a hell of a lot of fun and the future full of unlimited possibilities.
“Person of the Year: You”
UPDATE: Here’s a tongue-in-cheek goodie: your very own TIME Person of the Year seal.
[via ProBlogger]
TIME Person of the Year: Me!…
AND YOU, TOO, bloggers, blog readers, Wikipedians, YouTube-ers, and everyone else who contributes to and consumes a growing pile of information on the web.
It’s a gimmick, but I’ll bite.
Every year TIME magazine chooses a “Per…