Choice Seems Untimely
Last updated Friday, December 22, 2006 6:39 PM CST in Opinion
It is undoubtedly a good marketing move. People are talking about it, which is all a pitchman dreams of.
But Time magazine’s choice for its 2006 “Person of the Year” is not without its critics.
This year, the magazine, which has selected a man or person of the year since the 1930s fudged a little bit. Instead of recognizing one person or even a select group the honoree is “You.” For this purpose “You” are defined as users of the World Wide Web, a group which the magazine hails for creating a new type of on-line community in an improved version of the Web apparently dubbed “Web 2.0” by some Silicon Valley enthusiasts.
According to Time’s Lev Grossman, this is a revolution on a cosmic scale, one that will “not only change the world but also change the way the world changes.”
Really.
They mean it.
This is not just another boring old rip-off of the 1960s, even if we can’t help but hear John Lennon doing the background vocals. This is the real thing.
We’re sorry, and we mean no disrespect to the great cosmic community of the Web, but we’re not convinced. We’re skeptics by nature and professional training and we haven’t seen anything in Time or on the Web that persuades us that millions upon millions of people watching YouTube videos portends any great social movement. We’re willing to admit its usefulness and utility, but the Web remains just another a tool.
In his essay explaining the choice, Grossman touts the power of the Web to “balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing.
“You can learn more about how Americans live by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos — those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms — than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.”
We suppose that’s possible. But even if true, it’s irrelevant. Network television long ago abdicated its claim to be a serious observer of the human condition. That’s why we have Donald Trump instead of Edward R. Murrow.
So displacing television as a purveyor of information isn’t much of an accomplishment, if volume is your only criteria.
But even in its present, sadly diminished form, network television at least pays ritual homage to notions of factual accuracy and to the exercise of some educated judgment. On the Web, that’s pretty much considered a weakness, not a strength. On the Web, it’s a virtue to present those “raw feeds” unfiltered, without background or context. People can make their own judgments and form their own opinions. If you see it on the Web it must be so, even if it’s still flawed, frail, biased human beings who are posting.
Understand, there’s nothing inherently wrong with people deciding to share all the details of their personal lives, the hours they spend in “those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms” with anyone who has access to a computer. We have nothing against those who choose to do so. But there’s nothing particularly important about it.
For our part, we’re not quite ready to adopt the philosophy of I blog, therefore I am.
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