I see this year Time magazine’s lauded Person of the Year is “You.” Anticipating widespread annoyance at this editorial cop-out no doubt, the sub-title for their cover issue is: “Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.”
Personally, I think this year’s choice and tag-line is dopey. If Time wanted to draw inspiration from the “Information Age” – that phrase is so 1970’s isn’t it, hardly inspires confidence in their thinking this thing through – there is no shortage of interesting people who have made a contribution to “our world” and who could have been profiled this year, made the cover.
So, my question is this: who from the digital-, virtual-, networking-, information-, cyber-, yada-yada-space would you have put on the cover of Time this year and why?
Although I agree that the “You” as Person of the Year was kind of lame, I also see where TIME was trying to go with it. I mean, I’m the first one to shout about how the web is decentralizing all kind of things and blurring the line between media producers and media consumers, and to point out that this has massive ramifications for art, culture, news, academia, and just about any other field you can name. I just think the way TIME went about it was a boring, self-serving, Old Media way of desperately trying to grab a demographic that’s slipping away from them. A better way for them to accomplish it, in other words, would be to name “Your Kids” as the Person of the Year. Because people who read TIME and need to have these things spelled out for them are NOT the people in the drivers’ seat of the Information Age, whatever that is.
The Virtual Handshake Blog: Man of the Year: You (and youtube)