الثلاثاء، ١٦ يناير ٢٠٠٧
"Enough About You" - A post about the hilarity of naming "You" PERSON OF THE YEAR
As most of you know, TIME magazine has named "You" as PERSON OF THE YEAR. Although, I realize that self expression on the internet, blogging, youtube, and all that is creating a new wave of citizen journalism, but that doesn't merit naming "you" as the person of the year. What about all the other people who have given us so much to talk about this year, 2006 has been filled with excitement. How about naming George W. Bush, Dick Chaney, Senator Rumsfeld, or Sacha Baron Cohen person of the year. Yes, I do find all these to be rediculous suggestion for the person of the year, but not quite as rediculous as "YOU."
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I agree that naming "You" as the person of the year is a bit off-kilter, especially considering that there are probably tangible people in the world who did some actual good last year, and I have to wonder to what end they decided to pursue such a novel concept.
I'm inclined to think it has something to do with the torrents upon torrents of blogs and other citizen media aiming to usurp the current information infrastructure; much like a father whose son has just surpassed him for the first time, large publications have reluctantly decided to acknowledge the presence of citizen journalism. Shame they did it in such a corny way though.
Other news sites have taken this approach as well. CNN has a feature where citizens can send in clips of themselves covering stories for a segment called "iReport". Perhaps, with the everpresent "can't-trust-big-news" sentiments now growing under the new catalyst of information technology they decided it was better to make allies of citizen journalism, rather than enemies.
I agree with both comments. I think "You" as person of the year is a bad idea. Why should "you" get all the credit when soldiers are fighting for their lives?! If you want that credit, then do something worth honoring. What has happened to our society and our true heros? If we don't pay attention to what is really going on around us, then we are likely to get sucked into this world and deny the actual truth.
I think expressing yourself on the internet is so important-it helps us to form opinions and become creative individuals; but we also have to be careful as a whole and step back and look how we are shaping society.
"What has happened to our society and our true heroes?"
In response to that, I would reference the article that we got in class today; specifically, the part regarding how our culture has turned into an "everybody wins" affair. There seems to be less emphasis on the big victory now than there used to be and as a result our perceptions of what is heroic has become distorted.
With the inclusion of heavy, confusing censorship and sharp-tongued rhetoriticians it can be very easy to lose sight of what a hero really is, and it becomes dangerously easy to trivialize the actions of those who actually sacrifice something.
Beyond that there's the issue of information saturation. The internet has become so inflated with information, opinion, and rhetoric that it's become a chore to find a decent, reputable handful of sources from which to draw opinions.
News sites, blogs, message boards, comment areas.. with so much to read and a limited time to do it, we can't get to everything. Trivial junk gets in the way of meaningful information and people generally aren't patient enough to wade through it.
Since when did the staff at Time magazine suggest that I should be ‘Person of the Year’ along with you and millions of others? What good have I done to change the world for better that so deserved to be ‘Person of the Year’? Not that I care but I’m sure there are numerous of names that should have been up there more than millions of us do.
I was reading several articles related to Brain Williams’ article “Enough About You”, as well as people’s response to Time’s choice of “Person of the Year”, although some do make sense but some just don’t.
Yes, we are entering into new wave of digital democracy; in fact we control the power of media at our finger tip, we control what we want to see or hear but there is a lot of possible important information out there that we should have seen or heard and choose not to. Yet we choose to read blogs of other’s personal life or watch ‘do not attempt at home’ but did anyway video of some kids trying to be like Jackass.
Guess we are just too distracted to pay attention of what’s really going on out there because right now, it's all about me, me, and me that I want the whole world to know about. That's new way of American's life we're living in.
By the way I didn’t realize how scary I looked on front cover of ‘Person of the Year’ Time magazine…
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