White Noise Insanity

It's You! It's you and I and all the other people who made a difference during the year 2006, whether we were blogging against the most vicious and vile presidency in the history of our nation or raising money for our political team or the countless times we exposed the actions and inactions of the people who lead our nation. We. Were. A. Force. We made a difference and Time this year felt compelled to make this statement to the nation and the world. Congratulations Patriots!

Here's part of the write up about this wonderful honor (you can read the rest linked above in the title of this thread):

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006

The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. 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.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

Earlier tonight some were talking about Time's Person of the Year and I wasn't interested in watching the program on CNN. I'm not one for award ceremonies, pageants, or any other venues of self-promotion, but when I realized the Person of the Year was all of us bloggers (Time Magazine is going to have a 'mirror' on it's cover so YOU can see the winner! Very clever.) and others on the Internet who had gotten the recognition, I thought it was a fabulous and long overdue award! How thrilling!

So, give yourself a big hug and a huge high five to yourself. You deserve it Patriots!