She
was exaggerating — but only a little. Woolf saw a fundamental shift in
human relations taking place at the beginning of the 20th century
"between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and
children." Those changes, she predicted, would bring about
transformations in every sphere of life, from religion to politics to
human behavior. Few would say she got it wrong.
A century later, we are living through another transition. The
way we connect with one another and with the institutions in our lives
is evolving. There is an erosion of trust in authority, a decentralizing
of power and at the same time, perhaps, a greater faith in one another.
Our sense of identity is more variable, while our sense of privacy is
expanding. What was once considered intimate is now shared among
millions with a keystroke.
More than anyone else on the world stage, Facebook's Mark
Zuckerberg is at the center of these changes. Born in 1984, the same
year the Macintosh computer was launched, he is both a product of his
generation and an architect of it. The social-networking platform he
invented is closing in on 600 million users. In a single day, about a
billion new pieces of content are posted on Facebook. It is the
connective tissue for nearly a tenth of the planet. Facebook is now the
third largest country on earth and surely has more information about its
citizens than any government does. Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, is
its T-shirt-wearing head of state. (See portraits of TIME's 2009 Person of the Year: Mark Zuckerberg.)
Evolutionary
biologists suggest there is a correlation between the size of the
cerebral neocortex and the number of social relationships a primate
species can have. Humans have the largest neocortex and the widest
social circle — about 150, according to the scientist Robin Dunbar.
Dunbar's number — 150 — also happens to mirror the average number of
friends people have on Facebook. Because of airplanes and telephones and
now social media, human beings touch the lives of vastly more people
than did our ancestors, who might have encountered only 150 people in
their lifetime. Now the possibility of connection is accelerating at an
extraordinary pace. As the great biologist E.O. Wilson says, "We're in
uncharted territory."
All social media involve a mixture of narcissism and voyeurism.
Most of us display a combination of the two, which is why social media
are flourishing faster and penetrating deeper than any other social
development in memory. Social media play into the parts of human
character that don't change, even while changing the nature of what once
seemed immutable. (See pictures of Facebook's overseas offices.)
Like
two of our runners-up this year, Julian Assange and the Tea Party, Mark
Zuckerberg doesn't have a whole lot of veneration for traditional
authority. In a sense, Zuckerberg and Assange are two sides of the same
coin. Both express a desire for openness and transparency. While Assange
attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary
transparency with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables
individuals to voluntarily share information with the idea of empowering
them. Assange sees the world as filled with real and imagined enemies;
Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends. Both have a
certain disdain for privacy: in Assange's case because he feels it
allows malevolence to flourish; in Zuckerberg's case because he sees it
as a cultural anachronism, an impediment to a more efficient and open
connection between people.
At 26, Zuckerberg is a year older than our first Person of the
Year, Charles Lindbergh — another young man who used technology to
bridge continents. He is the same age as Queen Elizabeth when she was
Person of the Year, for 1952. But unlike the Queen, he did not inherit
an empire; he created one. (The Queen, by the way, launched a Facebook
page this year.) Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor.
It is a recognition of the power of individuals to shape our world. For
connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social
relations among them (something that has never been done before); for
creating a new system of exchanging information that has become both
indispensable and sometimes a little scary; and finally, for changing
how we all live our lives in ways that are innovative and even
optimistic, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year
Fair Dinkum! We needed a win. Getting smashed by the Poms in the cricket, all the refs are against us in the soccer, Kiwis kicking our ass in the Rugby and our banks (only have 4) are getting bailed out by the Yanks.... It's a conspiracy I tell ya!
"In a single day, about a billion new pieces of content are posted on Facebook."
And not a single one worth a bucket of spit. Toss in Tweeting, or whatever it is called, and billionaires are made.
Perhaps I was unwise to underestimate the banality of my species.
"In a single day, about a billion new pieces of content are posted on Facebook."
And not a single one worth a bucket of spit.
One day these people will be denied health insurance because they have been complaining about a bad cough to their peers on these so-called social networks . . . and that's just for starters.
Apparently useless info will be used against them at some point in time. It's the way of the sheep, willingly giving up their lives to the wolf-pack.
LMAO
Getting to the point these titles are meaningless.
A member of the Satanic tribe who stole the idea from other members of the same evil tribe, who in turn stole it from others. Figures!
So someone thought Time was not part of the corporate media? Whats the surprise here? If there was a single major news outlet that was doing there job, we would never have been hoodwinked into illegal wars, criminal bankers and politicians would be in jail in cells near GW and Obama, for that matter. On the other hand, the US citizens themselves have abdicated their responsibilities as citizens too, so what to do? This country is dying a rapid death, and I fear it will become very ugly in its final throws. I left. I am not going to return. There are more freedoms and a better quality of life in Europe. Is it just me, or is the little self serving slimeball they picked just a little scary looking?
I don't get this reaction much but my first response to that face is to want to punch it.
What a shocker. After Gates and Buffet annointed him into the globalist globe last week he pulls out Time Person of the Year. Time magazine has always been a semi arm of the CIA. Owner of Time/Fortune Luce, big business media baron and know CIA affiliate wrote a scathing and threatening oped after JFK threatened the steel industry if they raised prices promising to cancel government contracts of US Steel and Bethlehem and give the contracts to small business steel companies who did not raise prices. The name of the editorial? " Steel: The Idea of April" which was not so veiled a threat to Kennedy and direct reference to Caesar being assassinated by his own Senate. RFK was also about to undertake anti trust investigations of price fixing. This was the nail for the elites. Who sits on all the boards of the big steel companies? Morgan Trust, First National Bank, Prudential, Ford Foundation and the regular cast of characters. They ordered the price hike to see if JFK was serious about his threats. It was this moment they figured out he was his own man and would not allow the nation to be raped by big business using the U.S. Taxpayer as their credit card. Time also was sure to scoop up the Zapruder film instantly and lock it away for over a decade. The irrelevant Times and the dated publications of business/government propaganda is becoming extinct in favor of independent media. Perhaps they are looking for a handout from Zuckerburg and influence as they fight to have indepedent media outlawed.
Buffett and Gates...why, didn't they just have a private "sit-down" with Barry just yesterday ? Something about trying to get "big business" back in Barry's corner ( not that it ever was there to begin with ) ? The likely point of order was Uncle Warren and Bill's assertion that "the rich" simply don't pay enough taxes, and are only happy -- in the national interest -- to pay more.
+1. Buffett and Gates are the usual suspects when the picture needs to be beautified. Fitting that BO, WB, and BG are all at the same table. Guess BO did not like what he heard from small business a few months ago.
So, let''s see, to be Person of the Year, you need to steal a business plan, cheat your partners, and make a lame, clunky website for teenagers.
By all means DON"T do heroic acts to expose truth in the face of Goliath-like opposition from the most powerful govt on earth, and DON"T get the most votes for Person of the Year from Time's readers. Neither of those apparently have any weight.
Seriously, when I saw the announcement, I checked to see if it was from the Onion.
I thought you were describing Bill Gates there for a second.
Criticizing Time's Man of the Year is just easy with their spotless record that features such "greats" as: Laval, Hitler, Stalin, Truman, Khrushchev, Nixon, Khomeini, Andropov, Ken Starr and, our favourite, Bernanke!
Interestingly, the whole Man of the Year idea was brought up during a slow news week to increase sales ... that's says it all. So they picked Zuckerberg ... nobody really cares and shouldn't be surprised. They might as well have given the "honour" to Kardashians. Runners- up were The Tea Party (These people are still following Palin?), Karzai (He is not a real person, never was and never will be. Corrupt money stealing/laundering puppets shouldn't count.), Chilean Miners (Bad shit happens to people ... they just fortunate enough to live through and get on TV ... in a year of a lot of mining accidents a tribute to the ones that died would make more sense. No?) and Assange, of course.
Assange is, probably, the most deserving person on the list. Not because he is a great person ... perhaps, he isn't and the charges against him are true. He just stirs shit up and gets a however small segment of the population to think outside the box.
Facebook will go the way of all internet companies, remember Netscapes. Meanwhile Assange stood down the corruption of the world gov't's without flinching and Time is too cowardly to recognize it.
I have people angry with me that I do not have a facebook account and never will. I see it as a time sink, I have enough of those in my life already. I don't tweet, don't carry a cell phone (my husband bought me one and I will use it if there is an emergency that needs to be coordinated, that is it), no tweets, no myspace, none of it. Email is good enough for me.
And wasting time posting at Zero Hedge. ;-)
Time sink. Good description based on the amount of time my wife spends on it, which is great for me because it affords me the time to spend on ZH. Thanks to ZH I have convinced her it's important to keep all personal INFO off the page. Lately every where I look I see traps.
Exactly the same here. Most conversation in such places is bubblegum for the mind from which absolutely nothing of lasting intellectual value is gained. And then there are the huge privacy issues.
Zero Hedge anonymity and anger is more or less the opposite of Facebook. More like AssText
Time sink.
Here's another I like: the chronophage. Time eater.
Time sinks are places to burn off some time and are things you might even like doing. Reading, posting to ZH, walking to the store instead of driving. A way to blow off some time you have on your hands. You might even have some time to think.
But a chronophage hates you. Chronophages have no use for people other than as a resource and they wants to harvest you by eating your time, wasting your life energy, stealing your thoughts, controlling your desires and impulses. Government agencies are chronophages. As are the banks. As are things like FB where they only want your eyeballs and your middle brain, eating at your time and consuming your life without your consent. Bombarding you with anxiety producing distractions, creating needs they can fill. They are breakers, halters, liars, thieves.
Chronophagy makes money. And chronophagy is how you keep people too harassed and diverted to think.
MsCreant, you Luddite!
Wait a minute. I think I might be one, too! Never visited Facebook, wouldn't know how to tweet, don't text, and do not carry a phone. Don't even know the genesis of the "bitchez" many people use here, I'm so out of touch. If the world wants to pass me by, I'll happily step aside and let it go on its merry way. I don't like its destination.
The new face of Big Brother. It wasn't supposed to turn out this way.
Does anyone here NOT know what that image comes from? It is quite chilling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
And weep for America
EDIT: And before the anti-Mac anti-Jobs anti-Jew anti-fanboys get their undies in a bunch, yes I know it's an Apple commercial to sell the Mac which is over priced or doesn't run Windows malware or something else you don't approve off, but the message remains and is fundamental to our times. Substitute "Internet" for "Macintosh" and you suddenly have something else to chew on.
I've always wondered what the Blue Head is saying. Here is one transcription. Tell me we have not arrived here:
"Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives.
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.
We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.
Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.
We shall prevail!"
http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/1984_commercial_dialogue.html
Ignore the swirling water.
Please, make it stoooooooop!
You would have given him the nod too if he'd been paying for your hookers and blow. Admit it.
If he upgraded my hookers and blow, sure. As it is my hookers are skanks and the blow ain't all that.
Yay we're saved!! Society can pontificate its way to prosperity via Facebook...
Rome's fire just had some gasoline thrown on it.
2009 Person of the year, Ben Bernanke, became perhaps most hated person of 2010. I think chances are high that Zuck will follow Ben and become one of the most hated people of 2011.
Why not Greenspan? Didn't he save the world in 98 or something like that with Rubin and thug LArry summers
Jon, you're going to need to jiggle your avatar a bit if you want those beauties to fall out.
Is that your anti-robotrade avatar?
i guess those criteria for determining this award are based upon how hard they can fuck over the human race?
No.
Their one hope is that by always choosing tyrants, oligarchs and pirates as MOTY (Zucker-borg is all three) they expect to land a chosen place at the Propaganda Ministry when the republic falls.
It's a throw-away title. Might as well milk it.
I will never have a Facebook page. It's all part of my goal to quietly drop off the face of the friggin' Earth. Won't you all join me, so none of us will be able to locate each other?
SAD CHOICE!
Judging from the comments here at least... I don't seem to be in the minority on that.
Nothing especially against Mr. Zuckerberg...
And I agree that the Web is a very, very big deal... but this is more about the "Establishment's" TERROR that it should be anything other than a tame, corporate, homogenization machine.
I'm no anti-Facebook zealot... I'll admit to having a profile there. Such sites do have a place.
But Zuckerberg's selection represents the dreams of the elite for a controllable, tamed Internet.
DON'T LET THE INTERNET'S EVOLUTION GET F**ED-UP
I don't know if I can make this clear but... (the following is from a comment I made regarding paywall models for news and other journalistic enterprises to the Neiman Journalism Lab):
The first Information & Communication Technology (ICT) was perhaps a bird call constructed out of a leaf made by a hunter to notify his mates of where the prey was…
And the first journalism was Ooga running into camp and announcing she’d just seen the first spring sprout on a favorite berry bush.
And if the message was false, misleading or dangerous… the onus certainly didn’t fall upon the air through which the information was transmitted!
There was no gatekeeper, no intermediary… ICT AND JOURNALISM were BOTH strictly peer-to-peer.
The same could be said for politics and charity within the hunter-gatherer world... peer-to-peer. And these functions pre-date money and civilization.
The commercial transaction (and the creation of money, trade tokens, etc) arose with the need for interaction between larger or multiple 'social organisms'... certainly an important and needed development.
I'm not going to write some long essay here but the bottom line is that transactions involving "Commons-oriented" functions... politics, charity, speech/journalism... dovetail in ways that suggest that solutions geared to those specific "Commons-oriented" functions will benefit by dedicated mechanisms designed for that purpose.
Further a simple, secure and ECONOMICALLY VIABLE microtransaction must be enabled in this area through a Commons-owned entity or entities.
HOW the Web evolves… how WE determine its evolution is critical for the future of civilization.
There are NO issues more important than those revolving around the development… the evolution of this new LANDSCAPE. And that’s vital to remember.
We are constructing a landscape which then shapes everything that comes after it… and is built upon it. Its more akin to the air, water and sunshine than it is to the invention of the printing press.
And it may well be the first human created artifact to assume that level of evolutionary importance.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEB IS THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN PEER-TO-PEER RELATIONSHIP SINCE THE MOVE TO SETTLED EXISTENCE!
The Commons-dedicated Account Network:
A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons).
(I note that journalism is often a for-profit enterprise and that this presents a complicating factor. I believe this is an addressable issue.)
I believe the development of such peer-to-peer structure(s) is inevitable. And I believe it will naturally concentrate. Hence I'd suggest that both its Terms of Service and the design for its governance under a commons-ownership are vitally important. There are both pitfalls and opportunities in such a structure that bear attention.
BOTTOM LINE: With respect I believe the paywall issue is being viewed from the wrong end... it's not about the NYT's model or any other at that end of the relationship... Its about building the model for the reader's participation that then ALL publishers can access.
Patent review complete and approved for issuance upon payment of fees. Well, fees are paid (sold my car, house already foreclosed upon and through bankruptcy... its going to make a hell of a movie). I understand issuance and publication will take place within weeks.
Anybody interested in USEFUL financial innovation?
Re-Igniting the Enlightenment: On Building Landscapes for Decision
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/12/re-igniting-enlightenment-on-building.html
Capability ENABLES Responsibility
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2008/10/capability-enables-responsibility.html
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/culturalengineer
I likes it.
Obviously, wealth has everything to do with popularity. Buying fame the old fashioned way -- why else would eighth-fiddle even have a chance.
Ask yourself, what has Zuckerburg done for the average joe -- not a fucking thing which is why Time is a marginalized crock of shit -- in other words, the usual.
Meanwhile, more crotch scans for the peasants (non-people of the year) "for their protection (participation)" of being poor.
I would have thought his sister Randi who is the marketing genius of the operation would have also been named
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qSN61Z_uto
Millions of 12-year-olds agrees with Time's decision I'm sure. That magazine is an archaic relic that nobody with half a brain takes seriously.
I'm a bit surprised they didn't name Bristol Palin for her appearances and ratings boosts on Dancing with the Stars. I seriously wouldn't have been surprised if I saw Little Kim of North Korea on the cover of that lame rag.
2 years in a row for yahoods eh? WAKE UP AMERICA
I expected Ron Paul to win, but thats just me...
Time magazine editors and their readers would say, "Who is Ron Paul?"
What a Wanker, at least I got a good laugh from the posters here.
Shameful.
Farmville > Open Society
Pop Quiz: What has lead to more deaths: Facebook related bullying suicides or Wikileaks intelligence leaks?
Damn good question.
Answer search:
"Facebook related death"
and
"Wikileaks related death"
The results will speak for themselves. Not that I much care lol but it is an interesting fact none the less.
Yup. An especially good question because everybody knows the answer. Props, azengrcat.
Here you are:
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Facebook+related+death&word2=Wikileak+related+death
I was a bit surprised at the results actually. I think there is a lot of blogging about the potential for wikileaks to cause deaths that found its way into the results.
Time is a reliable indicator of mediocrity. Schmuckerberg deserves the "honor".
It's the circus.
Who is Mark Zuckerberg?
(That's meant to be a funny. After reading, I now know who Mark Zuckerberg is. Thanks so much to Time for keeping me abreast of what's really important.)
Facebook is as irrelevant and outdated as Time magazine is.
^ this
In mid-2009 Ben Bernanke said "No Double-Dip", at the end of 2009 he was awarded Time's Person of the Year
He was CORRECT! The double-dip DID NOT COME! Market up almost 80% off the lows. Dollar index holding strong and steady despite negative interest rates.
Why the doom? We should be greatful!
Still a long ways to go, but the worst is certainly behind us. U mad? Time to go on record!
"What" is coming?
Gold is falling apart again. Rising rates= Gold is a bubble :)
The illusionists who shape our culture, and who profit from our incredulity, hold up the gilded cult of Us. Popular expressions of religious belief, personal empowerment, corporatism, political participation and self-definition argue that all of us are special, entitled and unique. All of us, by tapping into our inner reserves of personal will and undiscovered talent, by visualizing what we want, can achieve, and deserve to achieve, happiness, fame and success. This relentless message cuts across ideological lines. This mantra has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We are all entitled to everything. And because of this self-absorption, and deep self-delusion, we have become a country of child-like adults who speak and think in the inane gibberish of popular culture.
-HEDGES
This is nothing new. Hygiene Motivator stuff. Reminds me of an episode of "Pawn Stars" which does alot of sports memorabilia. In one episode, a man brings in a bleacher seat torn out of some stadium after a world series. He has a period newspaper article with picture of him doing it in the 70s. He thinks it is worth lots of money. The proprietor says "they tore down that stadium that year, there are thousands of these things in circulation"
Why do they tear down perfectly good stadiums, rebuild them with tax payer money, where the projects are notoriously rife with corruption and excess? So some MBA can "motivate" his "team" with tickets to the new improved game. The worker can say "I was there. I am important! I will work harder tomorrow!" Facebook is a new and improved version of this game, but atleast it is not an expensive "motivator" like the housing bubble and current worldwide bailouts that are enslaving generations. And even those who did not "participate" are going to suffer with terrible real inflation. Was not the Bernake the man of the year last year?
Next years time person of the year will be the "Victory Gardener" not because they are particularly important, intelligent or noble, but because their self reliance keeps food prices down for the more erudite people who read time magazine.
i H A T E people, especially virtual ones†
I ... I thought we were friends ... /sniff
I read that as "virtuous".
I am an old man now so it makes no difference to me at this point but when I was 30 through 35 I had a job where I traveled between 4 cities had apartments in all 4 and 5 girl friends. I would have needed some dickless little twit like Zukerberg mapping my "social relationships" like I needed a good case of plague. This whole deal is pushed by the broads so they can keep track of men and talk to former girlfriends and crap like that. Why any man would have a face book page other than being hard up and mistakenly believing it will help him with the gals is beyond me.
You seriously should have your own radio show.
I might have said "youtube channel" but that would have been in poor taste.
There was a thing called myspace before facebook. Gasp. Never before, ha. He lucked into what he got. Why? Well trying to challenge myspace with a few hundred million dollars is just run of the mill stuff right? Even then what kind of an idiot has people sign up with their college email, and then forgets to give them the option of switching the email. You know not everybody gets to keep their college email address, fucking facebook dumbasses.
He was neither new, nor out of corporate grip from the beginning. Plus their business model sucks. Just wait until the next 'facebook' comes along and myspace's facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg, a nobody, who somehow is the man of year. Yes this country is full of fucktards.
This is probably about giving the movie The Social Network a second wind at the box office.
While the movie was produced by Columbia Pictures and not Warner Bros (of Time Warner), Hollywood is a small place. Columbia and Warner were a joint venture for awhile, and the producers of The Social Network have worked for Warner Bros in the past and will in the future.
Given the choice between straight news reporting and product promotion, which is Time going to choose? They are always hyping products and movies.
oy vey with all the kvetching, he's simply another nice jewish boy
like those google guys, steve jobs, bill gates, ben bernankster,
greenspan, obongo, rahm, assange, michael moore, etc.
no conspiracy here, just some very talented jews.
if you think michael moore's a good irish catholic i have land for you in khazaria.
http://iamthewitness.com/
That is such a stupid choice for person of the year! Time is just making itself more
irrelevant.
So, according to some here, if Assange was Time's "Man o the Year" then it would have redeemed itself from the trashheap of things no longer useful?
Gimme a break! Smart people use more immediate sources of info like ZH.
And yes if you're reading this then you "are" a part of the paradigm.
And yes I use facebook and twitter to disseminate articles that I deem worthy on those other time vampires in the hope that hearing the truth might wake some of the sleepers up and get them up to date on WTF is going on in this crazy world we live in!
I can still be wide awake and dreaming!
As was said last year around this time re: Time Person of the Year Bennie, this mugshot of Zuckie Boy Wonder is another example of wallpaper for the vomitorium...
WHat an honor! I should be man of the year! How abot my influence over gold prices huh?