Yes, I’m still mad about Time’s Person of the Year for 2006

Yes, I’m mad at myself. I was Time’s Person of the Year, and so were you, assuming you were born before 2006. Yes, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 was… “You”.

Time magazine is fond of these collective awards. Hardly a decade goes by without one or two. Some are more inspired than others, but to be quite honest, collective awards are weak and cowardly choices as a category.

I once considered studying under a professor who listed a Nobel Peace Prize on his CV. He wasn’t wrong: he was, in fact, part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War when they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. But that doesn’t make these mushy selections any more satisfying.

The contemporaneous reaction to my (and your) selection as Time’s Person of the Year was…not positive.

What a cop-out! They couldn’t decide amongst all of the wack — jobs in the news today, so they gave up and chose YOU. What a joke. — Craig Chicago, IL

Many commenters pointed toward one of two alternative choices: US President George W. Bush (for the War in Iraq) or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who was causing quite a stir at the time).

With the benefit of hindsight, Al Gore would have been the best choice. An Inconvenient Truth came out that year, and Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize the the following year. Nobody did more than Gore to make climate change a permanent fixture of Western politics.

The article itself announcing our selection was too optimistic.

We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

Their selection was equal parts prescient, wrong, and annoying. The thing is, they saw the danger. They just mistook it for a side effect rather than a defining feature.

Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.