Congratulations! ‘You’ are crowned as the Times Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year 2006′.

The shift from the ‘Goliaths’ to the ‘Davids’ was brewing up since long and Time’s recognition of the transition, undoubtedly, proves that the reigns of the future are in the hands of the citizens of the new ‘digital democracy’. The winners are all of us creating or using content on today’s most powerful tool - the World Wide Web.

The way ‘We’ seized the reins of the new media is just the beginning of the virtual world ready to take on our lives as never before. Our emergence as a collective force, through various channels, including blogs, social networking sites, podcasting and videos, reflect the power shift and the impeccable impact it had on millions of lives globally.

“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,” Time magazine’s Lev Grossman writes. With respect to web as a tool, he further added, “It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.”

The tools such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Wikipedia, to name a few, have made users powerful enough not only to upload and give voice to their views, but more importantly, interact with the entire world easily and effectively through comments, videos, pictures and links.

Web2.0 Revolution

Thomas Carlyle’s theory that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men” no longer holds true in the current scenario. And obviously, if we consider the collective power of all of us out here, we’d certainly put all so-called Greats to shame. The way social networking sites and online communities have gelled together and gave birth to unmatched knowledge stores like Wikipedia, was never done before.

Here we’re not talking about the dot com boom, the Web2.0 is a completely different thing. It’s a revolution, it’s about bringing together small contributions from millions of people and making them count.

The question is not what exactly we’re doing in this ‘new world’ sitting right on our desk, rather it’s about what more and more we can do by making the best use of the unlimited, unknown, perhaps, untapped power out there and create the desired magic with authority.

Lev Grossman questions:

Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

And the answer:

The answer is, you do. And 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.

Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There’s no road map for how an organism that’s not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It’s a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who’s out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you’re not just a little bit curious.

Yes, certainly, we’re not just ‘a little bit curious’, rather, with more power in our hands, we’re more passionate and conscious of the new beginning.

Via: TIME