A Timely Decision

I guess you’ve heard by now.  Time magazine has named me it’s “Person of the Year.”  You too.  I wonder how many conversations that one has generated.  

Jay Leno quipped that Time should at least give all of us one free copy (which, looking back on it now, seems strangely and doubly ironic since it appears that all of the magazine’s content is free on the web).  

I wondered if it was a scene where everyone on the committee was way behind on Christmas shopping and they all needed to get out of there.  “You!” said someone recalling the ethos of those 1970s smiley faces.  “The Person of the Year is ‘You’!”  

Where was this idea coming from?   So I read the editorial.  Turns out, there’s a fair and reasoned explanation.  According to Richard Stengel, the Time choice was based on the facts . . .

“that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy.  From user-generated images of Baghdad strife and the London Underground bombing to the macaca moment that might have altered the midterm elections to the hundreds of thousands of individual outpourings of hope and poetry and self-absorption, this new global nervous system is changing the way we perceive the world. And the consequences of it all are both hard to know and impossible to overestimate.”

Several months ago, I wondered in a post here if blogging was part of a real revolution, or if it was more like the CB radio of yesteryear.  I’m much closer to a good answer now.  But, then, what would you expect from Time’s “Person of the Year”?

I hope you have yourself a merry little Christmas.