Person Of The Year: Us?
Wonderful. Now everyone is going to start a blog. 
Of course the announcement from CNN/Time Magazine that we have all been named “Person Of The Year” only confirms what many of us already know; the technology revolution we were promised in the late 90s as a result of the widespread adoption of the internet has finally happened. No longer is news or information of any kind found anyplace faster than through online resources such as blogs and other social web sites such as digg.com or reddit.com.
Technorati Tags: commentary, myspace, person of the year, social, time magizine
Although we sometimes take for granted just how rapid information spreads across the globe, this new information dynamic gives us unprecedented access to a world once invisible to the average person. A world where everyone has a voice, a virtual soapbox they can stand on to announce or critique whatever they so desire. For the first time we can truly say we live in a world which can act as one on a level never before seen.
The Time announcement only reenforces the notion started back in the early days of the internet, when many preached that the net’ would bring intellectual and social equality through instant and free access to information. Who would figured that someday we, the original consumers, would become the producers and editors of the very content we consume. So where is all this heading? Is the social Web 2.0 era just another passing fancy on the way to bigger and better things or is it here to stay? Only time (no pun intended) will tell.
Its true that we are seeing an amazing pace of technological development with the social Web 2.0 style services, and that these sites are enjoying a virtual renaissance of sorts. This is eerily similar to the first few years of the internet when we saw thousands of personal home pages, some silly and fun, but many were devoid of anything even remotely interesting pop up all over the web. So what changed, are sites like myspace.com just another form of the original home page concept? I think so, but so much has changed during the last 10 years that the basic concept has given way to a whole new one driven by these recent technological advances. These advances have allowed the concept of the personal home page itself to change on-the-fly to meet new challenges as they are encountered and this has made all the difference.
So do we deserve to be the “People of Year”? I think so, and over the last year I believe we have earned it. There are many of you out there who labor tirelessly to contribute, enhance and enrich the lives of those around you through your online efforts. So lets keep the torch lit, and the midnight oil burning because when it comes to the internet I think the future still holds even more than we could ever hope to imagine.
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