Time Magazine has named "you," meaning me (and by inference, you, because you are reading this), as "Person of the Year" for 2006. The theory is that I, and my roughly seven faithful readers, are controlling the Information Age. We are engaged in community and collaboration. We are writing WikiPedia, an on-line encyclopedia of dubious integrity, and we are loading up servers and filling the ether with home movies of our pet iguanas and photos of our tattoos on YouTube and MySpace.
Time Magazine has made a serious argument for bringing their silly tradition of naming sombody as the Person of the Year to a conclusion. Now.
Never mind the madmen who are murdering people around the world; never mind people like Bill and Linda Gates who are trying to find a good and humanitarian use for their billions of dollars; never mind . . . OK, you get the point. You could name somebody worthy of the honor.
But seriously, one person? for an entire year? for the entire world? Naming "you" as the person of the year is an easy out, and an admission that the concept is absurd.
If you want a more honest view of 2006, check out the St. Petersburg Times' annual Sour Orange Awards or Esquire Magazine's Dubious Achievements issue.
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