Time magazine goes PC and chooses Zuckerberg over Assange

Time magazine’s Person of the Year award profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that “for better or for worse … has done the most to influence the events of the year”.

Well, that’s the official line, at least.

So why then in a year where Julian Assange made us all sit up and revisit our views on freedom of information and transparency, not to mention gave the Saudi royals some sleepless Ahmadinejad nightmare-filled nights, did the award go to Mark Zuckerberg?

Make no mistake, Facebook has a massive influence on life as we know it. It’s connected more than 500 million people. It’s a one-stop shop for friendship, dating, mutual interests, stalking exes and even looking up old school friends. It’s freaking awesome as it was in 2009, 2008, 2007 and about three years before that. It gained popularity way before 2010 and it turned social networking from a ripple to a tide before 2010. So why is Zuckerberg man of the year THIS year?

It is not as if the year was short of personalities who fundamentally changed the way we look at or do things. And it is not as if Facebook did anything fundamentally different this year than in other years. Sure it reached half a billion users this year but it had critical mass way before then. Facebook and Zuckerberg may have earned the award, but they certainly weren’t most deserving this year. And the popular vote showed that.

Assange on the other hand made the whole world sit up and take notice. We are all now debating and re-evaluating our stance on world politics, freedom of speech, transparency and the right to information because of him. That is a fundamental part of the democratic era. In an age where rising giants like Russia and China are often criticised for their strict handling of the media and limited access to information, we are evaluating if perhaps the rest of us have gone too far in the other direction.

We are scrutinising the fine line between freedom and anarchy. And if nothing else, diplomats are earning their keep, instead of sipping flat bubbly and making small talk at cocktail events every second night.

That is an important and fundamental debate to have in the information era. Assange has reminded us that the world of the internet has no rules as we know them. He has become the cause celebre of the global hacktivist movement. He may yet inadvertently help us bring order to the Wild West that is the information superhighway.

Sure, his contribution may be on the “for worse” side of matters, but that is no disqualification, as the award has proven in the past. Except for one notable year, 2001, when the then mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, won instead of Osama bin Laden, despite everyone knowing who did the most to “for better or for worse … influence the events of the year”.

Maybe they should rename it the PC/brand-friendly Time Person of the Year award and give it to Mary Poppins every year, what with Martha Stewart having that pesky insider trading past.