Last update - 00:00 24/12/2006
Who did the mouse leave out?
By Fania Oz-Salzberger
"You," blares the Time magazine headline, three large letters on a photograph of a huge Macintosh computer, one of the newest models on the market. The 2006 man of the year is each and every one of the citizens of the new digital democracy - that is, everyone who sat in front of a computer and created or consumed online software in the new transnational community. So the people of the year are all of us, the headlines in the world media say. All of us? Not really.
The print edition of the magazine bears a gray, empty computer screen, but Time's Web site shows many flickering faces in a rainbow of global hues, Benetton-style: European grandmothers, black rappers, Asian businessmen. The cover story celebrates the unusual man of the year thus: "Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world." Despite the wars in Iraq and Sudan, despite the evil quarrel between Israel and Lebanon, the story of 2006 is one of community and cooperation on a hitherto unknown level, Lev Grossman writes in the largest global weekly. It's the story of Wikipedia, the cosmic accumulation of knowledge, of the popular YouTube and its million channels, of the online metropolis MySpace. It's the story of the all-embracing digital democracy, and it's the story of you, all its active citizens. This is spiritually elevating, the story of a new, third-millennium heroism: We could have chosen Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Time is saying. But we chose you. The future, the magazine wants to tell us, gleams in the trillions of bytes accessed by freedom-loving individuals: you.
This is epic language, the language of the free nations in "The Lord of the Rings," the speech of Pericles to the proud citizens of the polis multiplied a billion times over. One can get excited by this text: There is no generation that has been born without an epic soul, there are only generations that have become used to mocking it. As expected, Time's choice has indeed been the object of criticism as well as ridicule. The magazine, some say, is playing into the hands of the Internet addicts and tycoons. It glorifies the uncontrolled golem that the magazine itself calls a non-bacterial organism. It is idolizing homo digitalus.
There is room to defend Time, and not necessarily because its resonant people of the year list has previously included large groups. In a criticism of conservative Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, the magazine argues that the end has come to the age of great people, of heroes as geniuses, who changed history and shaped our fate. This theory, as the cover story put it, took a serious blow this year. So be it. It may be a little early to eulogize the lone player who changes the face of the future, whether a scientist, a tyrant or an armed zealot lying in wait at a specific historic juncture. But the Time argument can be strengthened even more from a different angle. After all, the many Netizens are an alternative not only to the "great man," but also to the masses devoid of uniqueness and knowledge. The digital billions are greater in number than any mass of people in human history, but they are certainly not devoid of knowledge; they are not silenced, and they are increasingly less faceless. It is no coincidence that the Time article noted the new sites that give the many Web surfers their own platforms, thereby greatly increasing the unprecedented liberal individualism, the lone creator. A mass of individuals is no longer an immediate contradiction.
What, nonetheless, is bothersome about Time's flattering use of the second person? Allow me to specify: Who here is the first person? The magazine's editorial staff, of course. That's who crowns me, flatters me, suggests that I brag about my global keyboard citizenship. Here, therefore, is the Pericles of our time: not exactly a regular (digital) citizen, not exactly a heroic Athenian with nowhere to turn, but one of the stars of the Internet, a seasoned information trader, a master craftsman in shaping and marketing opinions. But democracy is not egalitarian; the digital type is only better at pretending to be.
Far more seriously, what about the third person plural? If Time is "us" and surfers of the Web are "you," then who are "they"? They are the ones of our time who are truly silenced, those outside the monitor, without a modem or keyboard, who populate areas unconnected to MySpace, who are hungry for food and not for the latest iPod. Perhaps there are increasingly fewer of these people. The bloggers from Baghdad and Tehran are welcome, as are the children with basic computers (that are certainly not made by Apple) in third-world schools and the donors who funded them. But many people will live out their whole lives outside the online democracy of Time, in Africa and substantial parts of Asia. If we don't bring them up on our screens, they are liable to become the "people of the year" in the not-too-distant future, which is neither in their favor nor ours.
Dr. Fania Oz-Salzberger has written several books, including "Israelis in Berlin."