The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: TIME.com: Person of the Year: You — Dec. 25, 2006 — Page 1.

I love America because its people are – on average – so positive. To a jaundiced European eye, it may appear that in making “You” the Time “Person of the Year”, the magazine’s editors are overstating things a little.

The “Web 2.0” phenomenon seems to consist of amateurs providing more (and sometimes better) content than professionals. But is that really much more than the modern version of the local amateur dramatics, letters to the newspaper, campaigning, committtee-work and charitable effort that characterise real communities everywhere?

For every thug and waster there are a dozen decent people “doing their bit.” Particularly so in America, where community involvement (for the middle classes) and philanthropy (for the wealthy) is so normal as to be unremarkable.

Are home movies on YouTube more than modern AmDram? Are bloggers campaigning for or (more often) against this or that any different from the local activists – or even the saloon bar ranters – of old? Are the less political, more social, blogs much different from the WI or the local reading group? From the participant’s point of view, the activities are the same. The Web just extends their reach.

What is happening is not new. Just the way it is happening. The challenge remains better to integrate the virtual and the actual. When real politicians resign at the demand of bloggers (without the MSM first taking up the story); when “flashmobs” become real mobs calling for the necks of real tyrants; when real politicians routinely interact with real people online (as opposed to a few nerdish show-offs from each side) then the world will have changed.

In the meantime, it’s nice for effort to be recognised. Well done, Time.

H/T Andrew Allison