Cliff LyonTime Magazine Person of the Year: You
Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.
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.
To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn’t make enough PlayStation3s.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:49 am
I take no responsibility! Any information I put forward, is to be denied. It is not My world, but that of the Decider. The Decider Rules. Time Magaqine, what trash, probably propped the Decider.
December 18th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Over on HuffPo, Jonathan Rintel points out that Time’s person of the year may be toast next year if we lose net neutrality. I’ve already the TV ads designed to confuse the public and lay the groundwork for a big lobbying push in the next Congress. Those of us who rely on an open Internet to create and distribute our own content might lose out to the telephone and cable companies who want the Internet to be more like cable TV.
December 18th, 2006 at 10:55 am
I just started watching youtube in earnest, and what a great forum, we hope it lives. Regular TV is never going to be the same. Even if it becomes pay per view, the genie is out of the bottle, as people now realize TV personalities, media savvy politicians are nothing special, it is all in the production and editing. Never again will reasonably intelligent people worship media made people.
What is amazing is the amount of utter uselessness that people seem to think people want to see. It teaches me every time I see it. Really going to have to think it out before I post things up. Wouldn’t want to add to it.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Now the real story comes out. Time’s actual Man of the Year was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but they didn’t have the chutzpah (so to speak).