For those of you who didn't catch that Time's Person of 2006 was 'you', well - you are. Maybe.
It was interesting to read, from Guyana, a well thought out perspective: Virtual Communities:
The current issue of Time magazine flatters its readers with the conceit that 2006 was the year of the Ordinary Person. There is a small mirror on the cover, instead of the usual celebrity portrait, and a short editorial hymning the praises of "community and collaboration on a scale never seen before." Blogs, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube, the most striking versions of the new online paradigm of "user-generated content", are heralded as quiet revolutions of the new information age. An era in which, if you listen to the true believers, peer-to-peer networks will overturn temples of the hidebound corporate hegemons, weblogs hasten the end of the loathsome "mainstream media", and a new era of digital freedom will sweep away hierarchies, isms and schisms, and generally make the world safe for democracy...
...So whether or not we are in the age in which ordinary people can make a difference-despite the obvious failure of this hope in places like Darfur and Iraq-there is always good news elsewhere in the world, often beyond our immediate view. People creating libraries and encyclopaedias for free, writing software that will cost nothing, helping less fortunate strangers to emerge from poverty. The virtual world has begun to shape the real one in several promising ways, driven by anonymous people who have begun to enjoy the thrill imagined communities that exceed the sum of their parts. Let's hope more of that community spirit spreads into the real world this year.
That pretty much sums it up, with a positive twist at the end. But pointing out how little the Time Person of 2006 affected things like Iraq and Darfur, it should be apparent that there is little room for celebration. Truth be told, people with (and especially without) internet access have had very little effect on the very way in which the internet itself is governed.
To read this in a Guyana newspaper on the web bodes well for Guyana - a country with a globally representative internet penetration of 16.5%. If only CARICOM would see things this way...or at least get corrective lenses...
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