Letters: Jan. 15, 2007

You Transformed the Information Age

As the Internet morphs from a place to consume into a place to contribute content, our engagement with and understanding of the world come more and more from people like you. Participants in the digital democracy cheered our Person of the Year choice--themselves--while others thought it overly inclusive

I would like to thank the editors of TIME for choosing me as 2006's Person of the Year [Dec. 25, 2006--Jan. 1, 2007]. I promise my family, friends and co-workers that I will not let this title go to my head and that the wealth and fame it will undoubtedly bring me will be used only for the greater good. I also appreciate the flattering cover photo, although I believe that your stylists could have worked a bit harder to de-emphasize the rectangular lines of my face. KATHI VIESER BIANCO North Babylon, N.Y.

I would call TIME's pick a colossal cop-out. It's the ultimate in egocentrism to think we are all the Person of the Year. I am a student; my mother is a teacher; my father is a small-business owner; a friend is a lawyer; my brother is a doctor. We are not even candidates to be the Person of the Year. The pool of choices should be limited to Presidents, generals, Prime Ministers and Popes. Names like Roosevelt, Truman, Elizabeth II, Hitler, Stalin and John Paul II should be succeeded by other similarly important and influential ones. We are simply people with jobs, families and ordinary lives. The Person of the Year should be extraordinary. TIME's choice was anything but. SCOTT FLATTO Brookline, Mass.

I was so excited that TIME selected me (all of us) this year. I just took a job at Google so that I could participate in the user-powered revolution, and I can't believe how lucky I am to be alive at this time in history. Your story said Web 2.0 is "a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter" and about people "helping one another for nothing." I just want to emphasize this point. People will help one another if they believe it matters. People will vote, for crying out loud, if they think it matters. This is truly a revolution for democracy and human rights, and as you said, it's just getting started. GALEN PANGER Stanford, Calif.

Isn't the focus on ourselves a bit like the class taking over the classroom? If anyone can publish on the Web, to what do we aspire? Just to write, and as long as someone reads our work, we have arrived? While I will keep checking the Web from time to time, I have decided to get my first newspaper subscription. NICOLE CARPINELLI Lawrence, N.J.

What a cop-out. Warren Buffet started giving away the bulk of his fortune (about $37 billion) to save the least among us and did not even garner a nod in your People Who Mattered profiles, but I get top honors for watching viral videos on YouTube and reading self-important diary entries on MySpace? I suppose the moral relativism that rationalizes genocide and ethnic cleansing around the world now includes something we could call footprint relativism--everyone impacts humankind differently, but all contributions are equal. In a year when you tried to recognize everyone as special, you made sure no one was. PATRICK PUGH Wilmington, Del.