Question Technology: More About "You"

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks Time's selection of "You" as person of the year is ridiculous. Andrew Keen, author of the forthcoming book The Cult of the Amateur, writes:

It's the logical conclusion of our consumer centric culture -- what Huxley, Adorno, Lasch, Postman, Habermas, Zizek and, most recently, Thomas Frank, have been warning us against. [...]

Anyway, I'm keeping my physical issue of Time for Dec 25th 2006/January 1, 2007 -- the one that awarded its person of the year to YOU. With its mirrored, iMac style computer screen, it has anachronism, stupidity and farce written all over it.

One day, in the not too distant future, people will look back at this self-congratulatory issue (in the midst of the single most disastrous foreign war in the country's history -- welcome, indeed,to your world) and think...

what the hell were those idiots thinking?

Link: The Great Seduction: Welcome to your world.

Christian Vachon at CJR Daily, speaking of those also-rans Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez, writes:

Like it or not, this year the "greatest impact on the news" came from this hydra that threatens American power, prestige, and economic stability. Still, the editors of Time would have us believe that this is less consequential than the novelty of Internet users who "mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals," and "turn on a computer and make a movie starring a pet iguana."

Instead of living up to the high mandate of its own editorial policy, Time responded with a non-choice, awarding the Person of the Year to an abstraction. By giving the award to "You," it effectively gave the award to no one. In dong so, it has insulted its readers with the assumption that they are too vain and gullible to know the difference.

Meanwhile, in an effort to outdo Time's stupidity, some of the would-be leaders of this Web 2.0/user-generated content revolution are unhappy that Time didn't bow down low enough. Apparently "you" is condescending; it should have been "us", and us the people don't need the MSM Gatekeepers to tell us we're the most important people in the world. Dan Gillmor wrote:

But there’s a tiny bit of reality in the fact that the cover didn’t say “Us” instead of “You” — in part because it was a vestige of the magazine’s traditional, royal thinking wherein they told us everything they thought we needed to know (and what to think about it). Our role: We bought it or didn’t.

If the people of the year are all of you out there somewhere, that leaves “we the deciders of what is news” still inside the gates.

Link: Center for Citizen Media: Us, not You.

Jeff Jarvis (in a blog post accompanied, apparently without ironic intent, by a picture of himself on the Time cover) wrote:

So the Time person of the year is you. Otherwise know as us.

Well, I suppose I should give Time some credit for recognizing the power of the people. Only thing is, there’s no news here. This is nothing new. We have always been in charge. It’s just that the people who thought they had the power now have no choice to but hear us and recognize that we are, and always have been, the boss.