Happy New Year. If you, like most people, were wrapped up in holiday planning the entire month of December, you might have missed that Time magazine has named “You” (I admit, it is a collective You, sorry) as the Person of the Year in 2006.

It is referring to Web 2.0 and web-generated content, saying “In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.”

On the cover was one of those mirror stickers that you see in some of the funnier Hallmark cards, you know, the kind where you can’t really see anything. I thought it was a cop out to name “us” with all the events of 2006. I imagined it would be a soldier, or a whole division of the military. I mean these guys and gals are being killed every day. If Time wanted to be edgy, by naming a collective group, how about all our troops or the troops’ families. Or someone crusading for peace. I think that would have been a more prudent choice.

Oh well, it can’t be undone. It’s us. It’s all of us that contribute to citizen journalism in some form which includes bloggers, of which many of us have started in 2006 or have commented on or read, at the very least. I still feel uneasy about the designation though. For one, there was no prize, no awards show, no fancy dinner or a big check. Second, I feel uncomfortable being looked upon as a collective anything, especially by a group of editors that no doubt are part of the “You” too. I feel like part of the borg on Star Trek, The Next Generation.
Perhaps participating in the information age has meant success to one-time start ups like YouTube and MySpace, but has it really made our world a better place?

In our case, the photography industry, like the entire media profession, is very affected by the way the information tide is turning. Nobody really knows if the ease of getting or seeing photos on whatever and sharing them online will help or hurt us. For now, the popularity of the image, whether moving or still, is the glue that is making communities stick to their computer screens and adding to the success of citizen journalism as a whole. Oh, and congrats on your win. -a.s.