You Transformed the Information Age

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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, New York, U.S.

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, Massachusetts, U.S.

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 enjoy the Web and will keep checking in from time to time, I have decided to get my first newspaper subscription.
Nicole Carp
Lawrence, New Jersey, U.S.

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, California, U.S.

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, Delaware, U.S.

time's editors must have been under enormous pressure not to name Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Person of the Year, as your readers did in the online poll. What percentage of people in the world have ever heard of YouTube? What is the scale of its effect on people outside the U.S.? The proper headline for your cover should have been American person of the year.
Zac Zhang
Shenzhen, China

Congratulations on your choice for Person of the Year. Time put a face on the millions of common people around the world whose boundary-pushing contributions have helped shape the information age in a myriad of ways. The 21st century may be the one in which ordinary people create improvements in such fields as education, health, environmental science and economics, using the inventive technology possible only in this uncommon information age.
Ratna Ray
Toronto

A Fresh Look at Iraq
The release of the Iraq study group's report gave me hope that the U.S. will move back to a more cooperative foreign policy [Dec. 18]. In the shock following 9/11, the U.S. Administration stepped into a trap laid by al-Qaeda. Five years later, civil rights are restricted the world over, Islamic radicals have gained strength, and the so-called war on terrorism has produced more hostile fighters. Tough talk about evildoers and enemies of freedom has further fueled confrontation. I hope it is now understood that bombs don't spread democracy, whether in Iraq or in Lebanon. Real strength means you reach out to the other side and work out a solution that makes life better for both sides. The reconstruction efforts in post–World War II Europe provide a good example of what could be accomplished today. Why not repeat this approach in the Middle East, starting with Palestine and Israel?
Axel Ruecker
Munich

There shouldn't be any exit strategy for the Bush Administration. The U.S. has to stay the course and clean up the mess it has created; otherwise it could leave behind a pan-Arab war. The demons that George W. Bush unleashed in Iraq had been held at bay for decades. Has he accomplished his mission of finding wmd or brought freedom, democracy, peace and progress to the Iraqis? The situation in Iraq is worse than those in Bosnia, Somalia and Congo combined. As for the Iraqis, it has now been acknowledged that although life wasn't the best, they were, and would still be, better off under Saddam Hussein. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.
Luke Okafoakpu
Ludwigsburg, Germany

Dividing Iraq would serve no purpose. The fighting there would just escalate from an Iraqi civil war to a war among Arab states. If the different factions in Iraq are separated, it won't mean they would peacefully coexist; they would keep fighting. Nobody but a few Sunni tribes liked Saddam, and nobody can say it isn't good that he is gone, but most Iraqis share only one viewpoint now: they want the U.S. out. If the U.S. set a deadline for getting out of Iraq, it would help.
Reuben Luoma-Overstreet
Dulles, South Africa

It's all so sad and tragic. every European acquaintance I asked about the Iraq invasion, including a German air-force general, said it would only make things worse. It was that simple. I'm surprised that Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and others didn't have that insight. I am afraid the fear of being labeled un-American and soft on terrorism was enough to quiet the voices of many in Washington who knew better.
Jim Buckley
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Learning from Past Outbreaks
Re your review of Steven Johnson's book Ghost Map, about a cholera outbreak in Victorian London [Dec. 18]: In a world of emerging infectious diseases, fear of pandemics and a growing threat of biological terrorism, it was interesting to read about the 1854 cholera epidemic. As a microbiologist and historian of cholera epidemics in the Middle East, I believe that a multinational effort and huge budgets are essential to improve the medical care and public-health infrastructure in the Third World. The developed countries are immune to cholera, but, since they have most of the world's wealth, it is their duty to prevent a new health catastrophe.
Dan Bar-El
Tel Aviv, Israel

Best Photos of 2006
I was happy to see the old Leica camera on Time's cover [Dec. 18]. It was completely appropriate that the best photos of 2006 were introduced by the camera of the last century! The Leica camera was, from the very beginning, the ultimate tool for many great professional photographers as well as the ultimate dream of so many great — and less great — amateurs. Notwithstanding the often superb quality of its competitors, anybody with a heart for photography has to admit that there was one thing prized above all else: the Leica.
Ingemar Lindahl
Lidkoping, Sweden

In terms of quality, all the pictures in "The Best Photos of the Year" were excellent. But it was disturbing that only eight of the 28 photos depicted happy subjects. Was 2006 so sad? Couldn't your outstanding photographers have found a few more uplifting photos?
Fahmi Bishay
Rome