Slashdot Mirror
TIME Names Mark Zuckerberg Person of Year
theodp writes "Sorry, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates — there's a new geek kid in town. TIME magazine has selected Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as its Person of the Year. Why? 'For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives,' reasoned TIME At age 26, Zuckerberg is TIME's second-youngest selection, bested only by Charles Lindbergh. So what does Zuckerberg do for an encore — Academy Award, maybe?"
more like douche-bag of the year.
If the Time profile of Zuckerberg is acurate, then I think even he would be offended by this statement.
Hmmm... So does Time. Great job on the full disclosure principle there.
Right, because all World Wide Web content is produced by robots.
It'll be a wonderful land of lollypops and puppies and kittens! Privacy concerns? No worries:
If you have privacy concerns, then GO BACK TO YOUR COLD LONELY INTERNET COMMIE!!!
Facebook isn't leaking your personal information to make money, they're doing it because they genuinely misunderstand why people need to keep some things private. Why do you have a problem with this? What's wrong with you? Do you have some secret perverse sexual fetish? Are you performing criminal activities? When did you stop beating your wife?
I did like this thoughtful paragraph:
But then it goes to the other extreme of The Social Network's Gonna make you demented:
I do totally dig this quote, which applies to other online services as well:
The article was all over the place, but it does give me a more favorable opinion of Zuckerberg, a less favorable opinion of Facebook and Time, lots of concerns about adapting myself to the social network instead of it adapting to me, and now, if you'll excuse me, I must go break this comment down into 50+ tweets.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
It obviously should have been Julian Assange, duh.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Facebook is kinda silly but it did enable me to reconnect with old College & high school mates I've not seen in 10-15 years (since graduation). Good invention.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Mark Zuckerberg is a lying, stealing cunt. Who would've thought a pathetic shit like him could be named Person of the Year. I hope he gets raped by bears.
Connected half a billion people? When last I checked, we were already connected before Facebook...
"We live in the United States of Amnesia..." - Gore Vidal
Palm trees and 8
Read Time Magazine?
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
They've had a history of choosing a non-controversial candidate over the obvious winner since choosing the Ayatollah back in 1979 caused them to lose subscriptions. Remember when they picked Giulianni over Bin Laden?
If there is any justice in the world anonomous will DDOS Facebook for stealing Assangers rightful recognition.
more like douche-bag of the year.
Just to underscore the "for worse" part of what the Time person is defined as: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."
Examples:
1938 Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler
1939 Soviet Union Joseph Stalin
1979 Iran Ayatollah Khomeini
2010 United States Mark Zuckerberg
My work here is dung.
Much like "The Oscars" and "Playboy", TIME is an old business shaped around an old business model that is drawing its last few breaths. So hey let's name a new-kid-billionaire as Person of the Year instead of someone that has done something - that'll draw new business in!
Shit, and I don't even use it. Most of the people who I know that use it are really blasé about it.
Is this really that good?
[ I don't like this ]
The Person of the Year was never an endorsement, merely an indication of someone who was important for something for a year.
Remember, Hitler was Man of the Year (1938), and Stalin was Man of the Year twice (1939 & '42).
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
So what does Zuckerberg do for an encore — Academy Award, maybe?"
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you win Academy Awards for, generally, being IN or at least involved IN the production of a movie. The movie The Social Network was done without Zuckerberg's involvement or even approval. If it were probable to win an award for having nothing to do with a movie, Idiocracy would have bestowed an avalanche of awards on the American political and business leadership.
I won it in 2006.
I appear to have broken slashdot.
My stories now load in a way that I have to click "More" a few times to get all comments.
Is there any way to have them load all comments by default, and is there any way to have it set that the majority of comments are abbreviated by default?
I want to do this with D2, and at least comments were fully expanded a few days ago before I broke it so it is possible....
I know I shouldn't post here but there isn't exactly a tech support line....any help appreciated!
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Does the time invested pay off? Does it increase your income? Does it increase your creativity? Does it heal your pain? Does it open new horizons for you? And finally, how much damage will it incur to you if you lose access to it (or if it disappears) and all your data and so-called friends evaporate?
Long ago I judged the pros and the cons, and I said NO. Hell, sometimes I wish the internet hadn't been invented at all - especially when I hear the tubes "running around my brain".
What's next, the Peace Nobel Prize?
I think so...
Today Time Magazine announced the Person of the Year 2007.
That this man managed to come up with a idea which has set him and any future children he may have for life, I hate the fucker however for bringing about yet another medium which proves how simple people really are between FB and Twitter I know when any of my friends is having a hygeine issue, when they are going to the mall, when their sig other cheats on them, whenever they are having a bad day! Never have I felt closer or more wanting a gun in my entire life. I hate people and you can say this and argue that but it wont sway my opinion that humanity as a whole is a stunted child sitting in a corner chewing on crayons.
When you dislike the human race as much as I do, Karma:Bad is inevitable lol.
It sure doesn't work that way anymore, or else Bin Laden would have been person of the year in 2001.
For being too pussy to admit Assange has had greater impact, as noted by the reader vote.
Remember the year they made "you" the person of the year?
Yeah, don't forget to put that on your resume.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So we have a company that has no interest in maintaining at least some privacy for its users.
We also have a company that, as far as I know, is still in the courts regarding ownership.
Yet, somehow this CEO gets nominated as the person of the year? I wonder how much he had to pay for this.
This is of course ignoring the fact that he wasn't even in the top 5 of public nominations.
If that is "Person of the year...." most likely to rip off your personal information and sell it, then the correct choice was made. Last I heard on the TV news is that WikiLeaks' Julian Assange was running away with it in the poll, someone must have been doing some serious clicking to not make it turn into another PR disaster for governments.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Time probably agreed to dispel the movie in exchange for zuckerberg-interview and details.
That rag still exists? Wow, I thought they might have gone the way of the dodo by now.
Seriously, I remember picking one up when I was in some waiting room a few years ago and it was like the ad flyers I get in my mailbox but they spent the extra dime to include a few staples.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I still don't understand why we are heaping so much praise on someone who has driven us to waste so much time. And no, I'm not saying I could have done it better; I would not have attempted to program anything like facebook because I would have seen it as a waste of time from the beginning. Nonetheless, what is the big deal, really? I don't see how his work has in any way improved life for anyone other than himself, or how this is important enough to warrant such honors.
If the movie about his life wins an Oscar I might never watch another Oscar winner again.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
lets pass out peace prizes to men who escalate wars and
men of the year awards to men who openly acknowledge you have no privacy and
we plan on making billions off you.
other than the fact that I have to listen to so many people talk about facebook.
and get off my lawn !
Absolute statements are never true
So what does Zuckerberg do for an encore?
If history is any guide, he'll spend the rest of his life depleting his large pile of money on failed startups and hobbies. Currently the popular way to waste a large fortune is building spaceships.
Have you read my blog lately?
And Time magazine supported the Vietnam War.
Who cares!
Just to underscore the "for worse" part of what the Time person is defined as: "for better or for worse, ...has done the most to influence the events of the year."
Which only further discredits this selection. I cannot think of a single important event that happened in 2010 that would not have happened without facebook.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I have fond memories of communicating by email, IM/IRC, etc. It is as if by virtue of being connected to the Internet, you can send an email message to any email address, and it will be received by someone else who is connected to the Internet. Or perhaps you can use a chat system to engage in real time conversations with any other Internet connected user. Or you might even use Facebook.
Like I said, the invention that really connected billions of the people is the Internet; Facebook is just a way of using the Internet to communicate.
Palm trees and 8
Yes, he is only a journalist, but the influence of his publications,
being them true or false, was huge.
In science, if you publish a paper that was cited in many other papers,
thus make this paper very significant.
Wow. What a bunch of shallow, narcissistic twats voted this shite poll.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
And facebook is a leading aspect of the "new tech". By tech I mean alternative energy, electric vehicles, stem cells, genetic engineering, smart phones, social computing, etc. Pardon the pun, but Zuckerberg is the face of this current tech forefront. And he is the archetype of the GenY 20,30-somethings who will lead the current wave of tech. No, I dont think he a saint nor the smartest tech guy out there.
P.S. I still say "may" because I am not sure if this recession will wallow for another decade, like most of the 2000s so far. Plus another economic factor may actually lead us out of it. Last time it was housing.
P.P.S. I would have choosen the Tea Party Movement as People of the Year for its effect on the legislation and recent election. It's even bending Obama to their will.
He's not a journalist. At best, he's a source that journalists use. (Technically, he's not even that. Manning allegedly gave the documents to Assange. If this is true (innocent until proven guilty), Manning is the source. Whether he got the documents from Manning or somebody else, Assange is only an intermedieary between journalists and the source.)
This is excluding the fact that journalists are supposed to have principles and standards. It's not a perfect process, but at least the NYT and CNN are trying to redact most of the worst of the stuff.
Facebook is about ME!!!! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!
Wikileaks is about, I can't believe the let that Palin girl get to the finals, and where is his birth certificate? Did you see that dress Kim had on?
Truly, Facebook is the perfect name for the ME generation. It is the perfect distraction from the real world they would have to pause and think about.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
.. Assange is the one articulating the philosophy that's motivating Manning and many others to leak documents.
Manning's presumed fours leaks may be remembered as an incredible act of daring self sacrifice and patriotism, but he's ultimately a guy who read someone else's philosophy and implemented it.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
For intelligent people, Time is not relevant and hasn't been
for many decades. Time spews an editorial line, not news.
Those of us who prefer to think for ourselves don't waste OUR time
reading "their" Time.
If you want information of quality, read The Economist.
Disclaimer : I have NO affiliation with The Economist.
FTFY...
Yes, he is not even a journalist, but the influence of his publications,
being them true or false, was huge.
In science, if you publish a paper that was cited in many other papers,
thus make this paper very significant.
I see no differences between the works of Zuckerberg and, say, Alan Ralsky.
Both have a massive share in their respective spaces.
Both are a huge monetary success.
Both are being used to run massive advertising campaigns.
Both are a major waste of bandwidth and productivity.
Both are a boil on the ass of mankind.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Because Julian Assange's story didn't hit the right window.
The only good thing about Suckerberg being person of the year is that it didn't go to Assange.
Although it's hard to say which is the bigger douchebag...
Aside from Time just being another news magazine with demonstrable shortcomings in good common sense over the years, I just can't come to agree with their choice.
Though the Wikileaks guy has been harassed and harangued by the authorities these past months at least he's kept to his plan and released information that the public must learn about in order to make informed decisions about who our leaders need to be. For me, that's a lot more important than whether a social networking site has an impact on our daily lives.
Way to go Time!
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
People who don't use Facebook.
The new "people who don't watch TV".
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
My lord, a handful of comments and already I've seen two comparisons to Hitler. That is pathetic, even by Slashdot standards. Why the vitriol?
Seriously...comparisons to Hitler and Stalin? You really need to get some perspective, mate.
Every single person on Time's list of Man/Person of the Year should be mentioned as doing something "for worse" with the exception of Gandhi & MLK.
I could have put every US president including Clinton and both Bushes. But I didn't. Do you know why? Because people would contest it. I simply chose some of the names that are most commonly accepted as "evil." And that's localized largely to my country. And I put Zuckerberg after them because he's now on the same list and I don't think he's done a whole lot of good. I find it "pathetic" (which you so indiscriminately called me) that you take issue with me "comparing" (which I did not) Zuckerberg to Hitler but you have no problem with me comparing Hitler with Stalin with Ayatollah Khomeini. Surely they were not all "equally" evil and, at least in my opinion, were in succession less and less worse.
I use Facebook regularly. It's open right now in a tab with my profile up. But I think it promotes people to give up their right to privacy and I think that's really bad. Not slaughter people bad but as bad as it gets by today's more civilized standards. And it's as bad as Time is willing to get aside from presidents. Why wasn't Osama Bin Laden on the list? Surely *for worse* he affect the world's economy in 2001 more than any *for better* person could have?
"Some perspective?" "Comparing?" I don't thing you read my first sentence which said I would list some of the people on the list that Zuckerberg is now company to since people don't understand what the list represents. But, here, let me satiate your hatred:
1938 Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler
1939 Soviet Union Joseph Stalin
1942 Soviet Union Joseph Stalin
1950 United States The American Fighting-Man
1959 United States Dwight D. Eisenhower
1960 United States US Scientists
1971 United States Richard Nixon
1972 United States Richard Nixon
1979 Iran Ayatollah Khomeini
1980 United States Ronald Reagan
1983 United States Ronald Reagan
1990 United States George H. W. Bush
2000 United States George W. Bush
2003 United States The American Soldier
2004 United States George W. Bush
I'm sure you're okay with that partial list and "comparing" all those people as equivalents of each other!
My work here is dung.
In related news, Tyler Winklevoss says he totally named himself that first. (Thanks JR Raphael)
You can't take the sky from me!
Are you serious? Read this article and then tell me that he's not doing journalism. I don't really see much of a difference between what he does and Woodward and Bernstein publishing the insider tips from their informant "Deep Throat". And everyone needs to get over the impression that Assange is just passing on documents. He and his organization are doing a ton of work in fact-checking, redacting, mediating with other media outlets, etc. (If you don't realize how much redacting there is in WikiLeaks, you don't know shit about this issue and need to do more reading before you comment again. The staffs of four of the most important newspapers in the world are collaborating with the WikiLeaks staff on the gigantic project of figuring out what needs to be redacted. That's why the release of the cables is basically a trickle. Processing them responsibly takes a ton of work.)
But I do think that Assange would serve well the cause of WikiLeaks if he got a job from a proper newspaper somewhere - I'd recommend Iceland. That way, the "leaks" would be called "newspaper stories" in Geysir News or whatever. If WikiLeaks were a newspaper, they would be by far the most successful and talked-about newspaper in the world. I think the rebranding of their operation would be a good start to help remedy misperceptions like yours.
There is a much more reasonable approach to gaining Assange and Manning publicity that even the U.S. government's PR machine cannot silence. You should send Amnesty International a donation together with a note saying they should name Julian Assange and Bradley Manning as prisoners of conscience. You might say roughly :
"I would be very appreciative if you'd consider spending this donation on evaluating more thoroughly the evidence against Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. I believe you will conclude that Assange is in-fact a prisoner of conscience once you've investigated the matter fully. We are all well aware that most regimes will go to great lengths to obfuscate their politically motivated criminal charges, but striping away that facade will naturally require more effort in the west.
Beyond this, there is an underlying truth that Assange's imprisonment sends a message of amoral support to repressive regimes the world over, especially those large enough to feel they have a popular mandate by virtue of economics, like China and Russia. The Bush administration has already provided these regimes with ample ammunition for acts of torture and coercion, assuming they can lie about any given prisoner seeming dangerous. Please take a stand against this further expanding this amoral support.
I recognize that Bradley Manning's case involves further subtleties surrounding his obligations to protect classified material, some of which must remain confidential to protect others. It is nevertheless clear that his actions were based on conscience and require detailed examination."
That'd be a shit storm if Amnesty deemed either one as prisoners of conscience.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
This is clearly a case of political pressure. And also a case of popularism retardedness... I used to be on Facebook, and let me tell you that this site just reeks of sheer stupidity also the coding of it is far from brilliants, there are gaping security holes everywhere, bugs, it is slow as hell... but people love it, well at least people who are not tech-saavy (and therefore dont realize all the issues with it). Zuckerberg? He is a crap coder thats for sure, if they want real coders they should look more the way of Torvalds, Carmack etc... He is also a scheming bastard with not respect whatsoever for anything but his fat ego. The social network movie? I started watching it, got bored with Zuckerberg's scheming jew's life after about 20 minutes. Clearly not worth making a movie about... Assange was well ahead in the Time poll and clearly in a shorter amount of time influenced alot more than Zuckerberg. US government censorship at work again. You know what? As a EU resident I say fuck the US government let them rot. Enough bending over backwards to please americans. I fully support anon if they want to strike Time and FB to make a point.
Did he win it because he pledged $100M to a school? I mean, that's pretty amazing.
But he's no Julian Assange. Time was just looking for an excuse to remove Assange from the list because he was going to win the poll. It would have wrecked their party, just like Moot winning last year.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Listen, I could understand if Edison was man of the year for inventing the light-bulb... But, if twenty years later, everyone had forgotten about it, and then suddenly, some other dude re-invents the lgihtbulb, and is made "man of the year", then TIME clearly has no actual journalists left and their ability to do in-depth analysis is out the window.
And this is the case with Zuckerberg. All he has done is re-package the BBS into a web-based app. The back-end to Facebook could be Citadel, for all we know. Hell, Softarc's "First-Class" BBS/groupware product had a web-based front end before there was a Facebook. It's all been done before, it's just that this time around, this particular idiot was in the right place at the right time. He got rich, and thousands of other Sysops didn't.
Heck, for a while it appeared that Myspace was going to trounce Facebook. I'd say, rather than make Zuckerberg "man of the year" make Zuckerberg's PR Agent "Man of the Year" -- *That's* the guy that worked harder than anyone.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Zukerberg had a movie made about him. Assange entered the history books. The criteron for person of the year is who ever made the most news. This is as cowardly as their 2001 choice.
How pathetic that Zuckerberg is the best they could come up with. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I mean really... with all that is happening in the world, they pick the creator of a social networking site, and one that is possibly most notable for playing fast and loose with people's info which they thought was not for sale. If he's Person of the Year, then we really are swirling in the pot.
--- Bill
Good point, if Zuckerberg is this years POTY, Bin Laden should have had it in 2001 (and many years since).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That New Yorker article pretty much describes the EXACT OPPOSITE of what journalism is. You see Assange and his team trying to craft their message in the Collateral Murder video for maximum emotional impact, so it can advance their agenda. Because it's the New Yorker, you don't see the fact that part of his editing is removing the careful deliberations that they went through before engaging. This is edited out so that Assange can call them careless. This piece makes it clear that WikiLeaks has an agenda beyond "information wants to be free."
By contrast, journalists are supposed to report the bare facts, and leave it to others to interpret what they mean. Any piece including the opinion of its creator is NOT journalism.
There are other kinds of writing than journalism. Tom Clancy writes novels. He's not a journalist. The New Yorker is a commentary magazine. They're not journalists either. Assange is an activist, and he leads an organization of other activists. Assange and Wikileaks put out source documents, and then go interpret them. Those interpretations are agenda driven, which is why they're not journalism, which is why he's not a journalist.
> for changing how we all live our lives
I'm sure there are at least a few people left untouched by Facebook. Heck, I'm a geek and a software engineer, spending more hours at a computer than I care for 5+ days of the week, and I don't use Facebook. I think I've visited the Facebook site about 10 times ever. While I know a lot of people love it, I'm not feeling left out or life my life is less rich without it.
This should be very interesting to TIME's one remaining reader.
I mean, a rapist who converts legions of Internet fanboys to worship his every move and take his innocence for granted? Pretty amazing.
Arsebook has just killed my second account in 5 months, I'm yet to know why either was killed. Yet a person faking me is still active after at least 10 reports from other people. New World Order Book!
Look who won last year... Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke!
Worse still look who came second, the fuckin Tea Party!
You need to be best friends with Goldman Sachs to win a Time award.
And people who's names end with -Berg, -It, -Man, -Stein etc have a special place in history.
First of all, it's pretty obvious that this is a response to The Social Network, because Facebook's been around (and pretty popular) for a good long time now. 2010 is in no way "the year of facebook," it's just the year of the Facebook movie. Christ. Second of all, what is with this bizarre idea that Zuckerberg is some kind of visionary innovator? Frankly, he isn't even that great of a coder on the basis of FB alone: it isn't a particularly elegant or complex piece of software. And what's more, Facebook is someone else's idea. Social networks existed before facebook. All Zuckerberg did was make them slick and readily monetizeable. It's not that I think Zuckerberg's the devil, it's that I think he's fast becoming this generation's Bill Gates: a shrewd businessman who an unsavvy public makes into some kind of technological golden boy. Zuckerberg didn't bring anything new into the world, he just found a way to get paid for what already was there. Zuckerberg is basically a mainstream version of 4chan's Moot, with the exception that he pimps other people's information for profit. This conflation of profit with innovation is a dangerous one, and it seems like instead of getting wiser about it the more potential there is for both, we're getting stupider.
Time Magazine - not as important or influential as we all thought it was. I mean, they didn't even win their own award once!
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Mark Zuckerberg is a cunt
Time has apparently named Mark Zuckerberg the "Person of the Year". You know who else was once a Time "Person of the Year"? Hitler, in 1938.
http://identi.ca/notice/60474367
developer http://flamerobin.org
metrix007 is pissed about this http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1888084&cid=34462614 where he blundered on hosts files. metrix007 got played. He played himself badly due to his skimming.
I give a big thanks Times "that are a changing" but i was myself for Assange
financial times person of the year is Steve jobs, he is worth it. 2010 was an important year in apple history. http://bit.ly/eRycfp