> The Person of the Year is... You
- 19 Dec 06, 09:32 PM
If confirmation that web 2.0 has arrived, then it comes in the form of Time Magazine announcing that their Person of the Year is “you”. To make the point, the magazine had a mirror on its front cover. So take a bow everybody. Its the growth and influence of user generated content on the web that won it. Everybody? Well, not quite. Too many web 2.0 sites still prevent people taking part for access reasons.
It’s quite exciting for an institution like Time Magazine to recognise the impact and potential of web 2.0, describing it as a “massive social experiment”. But the value of that social experiment is undermined if all sections of society cannot participate.
We’ve spoken here before about how web 2.0, or the read-write web, or however you want to describe it, is changing the way we get information. In fact, it’s not just that we can get information from blogs, wikis and so on, but that we can contribute as well. The world of the web is becoming a two-way medium, where we can all have our say – at least in theory. Time Magazine suggests that web 2.0 will, “not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” That’s a big claim, but suppose for a minute its correct. It only strengthens the need to make these sites accessible to all.
What is also interesting about Time Magazine is that they aren’t just paying lip service to web 2.0, with a view to being controversial, but are making use of the opportunities it provides. Managing Editor Richard Stengel, made a video asking for nominations for the award and posted it on YouTube. Thousands of page views resulted, with dozens of nominations and comments. A number of Time’s correspondents have blogs as well.
If we didn’t know before, then all of this just goes to illustrate what an important tool web 2.0 is becoming in our daily lives. Which just goes to re-enforce how important it is that these kind of websites are accessible to all. How truly democratic can some of these sites be if they deny some members of society the chance to contribute? How representative of society’s views can they be? What insights could they be missing?
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