By SCOTT DEWING
Published: February 2007

JUST IN CASE you missed this news tidbit amidst the consumer hysteria leading up to Christmas, I was selected by TIME Magazine as their “Person of the Year” for 2006. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. Usually this distinction is reserved for world leaders or celebrities, of which I am neither. Apparently, there was no one worthy in either of these categories. All the world leaders made bad decisions last year. They were either busy killing people with the arsenal of weapons at their disposal or they were pursuing the build-up of their arsenal so that they could kill people in the future. Rather than championing human rights, they spent the year bickering about nuclear rights (“You’ve got the Bomb, I want it too”). Not exactly “Person of the Year” behavior. Meanwhile, the celebrities were busy getting divorced, sleeping with each other and getting arrested for drunk driving (and not necessarily in that order). Apparently, I received the Person of the Year award simply because I didn’t kill anyone last year (or order anyone else to do it for me), didn’t cheat on my wife and had the wisdom to not throw down several highballs then jump behind the wheel.

I discovered my newly achieved status while standing in line with the other neurotic, last-minute Christmas shoppers at Barnes & Noble. Looking up from my latte and armload of books, I was shocked to see my face on the cover of TIME Magazine. Then I noticed that the face of the lady in front of me was there too. In fact, anyone who was in front of the magazine rack was briefly on the cover. Not exactly achieving Andy Warhol’s aphorism, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” but approaching it when you got past the cheesiness of the cover, which had a picture of a computer monitor with its screen covered with reflective silver paper. The caption below read, “You. Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.”

I was immediately drawn to this proclamation. We, the unwashed masses, were finally in control. Our destiny was no longer to be squandered by incompetent and impetuous world leaders or drunken adulterous celebrities. We called the shots in the Information Age and ended up on the cover of TIME Magazine. In the immortal words of Austin Powers, “Yeah baby!” This was the world I wanted to live in. A world in which the “little guys” had a voice and an impact. A world in which we all mattered. I had to have a copy.

At first I thought the cover was a cheap gimmick, an easy out from the difficulty of finding anyone who did anything good in 2006 or admitting that there just wasn’t anyone who rose to the occasion. “In 2006, there were no outstanding people who did anything good for the world,” wasn’t much of a lead and probably wouldn’t sell many magazines. I began searching for some kernels of truth beneath the seemingly corny cover.

“To be sure,” the lead story read, “there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming…”

Indeed, 2006 was a miserable year of violence and death during which the global thermometer continued rising toward oblivion. While I hold out hope, I must admit that 2007 doesn’t look to be shaping up to be much better.

“But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story,” TIME claimed, “one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before…It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

According to TIME, we’re changing the world and “the way the world changes” through the tremendous power of the World Wide Web. More specifically, we’re accomplishing this with “Web 2.0”, that is, the latest iteration of the Web in which people are increasingly able to publish and share information, to collaborate and create powerful virtual communities that straddle physical, geographical and political borders.

“Who are these people?” TIME asked rhetorically. “The answer is, you…And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy…TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.”

What TIME doesn’t mention, however, is that there are billions of people in the world, many of whom don’t have access to the Internet, may not know what the “World Wide Web” is or, if they do, don’t care. They’re poor. Really poor, living on less than $2/day. Fifty thousand of them die daily because of malnutrition and disease. Thousands more die because of war. For those who do survive the perils of poverty and war, the Web has not fundamentally changed or improved their world. Some might argue that it’s made it worse. While we’ve been busy “seizing the reins of the global media” and “framing the new digital economy” by emailing, chatting, blogging, updating our MySpace site, publishing our latest silly home movies to YouTube, downloading and uploading music and software, shopping online, or playing hours of World of Warcraft, other people have been dying brutal, violent and very low-tech deaths. I know there are many of you who are consciously utilizing the Web (and the wonders of “Web 2.0”) to make real change in the world, to educate yourselves, to identify what is wrong and broken, to collaborate, organize and mobilize to try and fix it. You are the few. For millions of others, the Web has become a new form of interactive entertainment, a debilitating distraction from the real problems and challenges facing our global village. In short, a waste of time and human potential.

In the end, TIME’s Person of the Year issue was more a celebration of technology itself rather than the power of the human spirit to transform the world. As I look now at my reflection on the cover, I discover the real message hidden there. It’s not technology that will change the world. You want to see what’s going to change the world? Go look in the mirror. That’s what’s going to change the world. You. Yes, you. Ordinary people like you and me working hard for what we know is right and good. Yeah baby, it’s “your world.” Welcome to it. Now let’s live up to our new title of “Person of the Year” and go make the world a better place not just for that reflection in the mirror, but for everybody.