[Sigia-l] The Time magazine person of the year is YOU

[Will Parker]

On Dec 18, 2006, at 12:06 AM, Ziya Oz wrote:

> The cause of "You" will not be advanced because of Time (and other  
> one-way
> media), but most likely in spite of them.

As Big Daddy McLuhan pointed out, new media forms neither invalidate  
nor replace old media forms, though they *do* tend to force the old  
media to shift emphasis.

Hence, no matter what you think of mass hard-copy news media, it's  
entirely valid for Time and similar 'news+propaganda+ads'  
publications to comment on the personalization wave. They're  
performing their socially-assigned role as 'authoritative voice'.  
It's an old model, and it's dying, but until Western society at large  
finds a new socially-approved 'voice of authority' *, we're stuck  
with them.

*[We're primates, and we like having authoritative structures. If  
anyone is unclear on this, go to the primate compound at the local  
zoo and spend a couple hours observing. You'll be a better IA for  
doing so.]

As members of the IA and larger Web communities, we certainly *will*  
have to watch for and counter inaccuracies, because it's damned  
unlikely that mass one-way communication channels will actually  
understand what's going on.

Having said that, I'm now going to go *read* the article instead of  
yak about it.

- Will

Will Parker
wparker at ChannelingDesign.com
http://www.ChannelingDesign.com

"Well, let's look at it for awhile and be irritated by it and then  
we'll figure out what to do." - Frank Gehry