Letters

I would like to thank the editors of TIME for choosing me as 2006's Person of the Year [Dec. 25-Jan. 1]. 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 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.

A million bravos for naming the millions of us Person of the Year! We have transformed the Internet into a great resource for education and creativity. The world will never be the same, and we all did it!
Louis Perry
New York City

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.

Your innovative Person of the Year cover was interesting, but I see behind it a deep and perhaps unintended symbolism. The image of oneself that we see on the cover is distorted and fractured. Does this symbolize the fragmented nature of the human psyche today? In India, we have known for millennia that even the image that one sees in a clear mirror is not the real you. The real you is the spiritual spark that resides within the mysterious depths of human consciousness. So perhaps your cover is really more appropriate than you realize.
Karan Singh
Member of Parliament
New Delhi

Images of 2006
One thing that "The Best Photos of the Year" [Dec. 18] showed us is how much more beautiful the world would be without the toxic influence of American and Israeli politics.
Natalia Agapiou
Brussels

The photo of the children scavenging for food in Kanpur, India, reminded me of Jean-François Millet's painting The Gleaners. It was really sad to see what these children's lives are like. I hope we can create a better world full of love and hope so that the next generation will not see the conditions necessary to create another, updated version of The Gleaners.
Lether Lam
Hong Kong