Who's The Man?

It seems that Time Magazine has decided you (and everyone who accesses or provides content for the Internet) are, indeed, their Man of the Year.

“For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is you,'' staff writer Lev Grossman wrote in the cover story.

Perhaps the blogging community is receiving this award from Time Magazine with measured tone because of something we bloggers already know. Just as the Internet has equalized the playing field in the media, we might consider a different hero next year.

I would suggest that the Luddites, those contemporary opponents of technological change, take the prize next year. Like Thoreau, they are the ones who keep things in perspective. After all, they are the ones who serve as a balance to the fulcrum of a world going chaotic. The electronic leash has its own downside: the seeming urgency of dispatches from the Blackberry, the hours spent in virtual community rather than family. We might just find that the technophobes hold the balance for a world that thinks it is more substantive than it really is.

-Wes