Person of the Year?

Hey, you! Person of the year! Yes, I mean you. Didn't you hear? The venerable editors at Time magazine have chosen" you" as person of the year.

Columnist John Dvorak over at PC Magazine calls it a "cop out" and an insult.

And here's my dilemma-I read both articles. And I agreed with both articles. Yes, I know, how Jewish of me. They're both right. Well, they are.

Time's editors are correct. It is a brave new world out there, and average, ordinary, everyday people are having an effect, an impact. The internet has become a very empowering tool.

Dvorak's correct in that the pictures seem an odd variety of choices. And it is somewhat of a cop-out, especially given that so much of what's on the net is sophomoric crap.

Yet I think there's an even darker side. I remember the peace movement of the 60s, and how the military-industrial complex eventually bought it out. When you could buy a peace sign necklace at department store, the end was in sight. The movement was subsumed by the capitalists and the militarists.

Yes, its an oversimplification. And I'm no conspiracy nut. However, I can still see the same thing happening to the internet. Academics rail against Wikipedia and get public schools to prohibit students from using it for research. Big companies are buying out all the vanity sites (which, in and of themselves, are hardly innocent of being part of the corporate cadre that rules the world.)

So the question becomes-will we live up to Time's choice? Can we beat Apple and Microsoft and HP and IBM and Boeing and Haliburton etc. ? Only "time" will tell.

Migdalor Guy