Pick Your Own Net Person Of The Year

This week, Time Magazine chose Amazon's Jeff Bezos as its "Man Of The Year," a choice that overflows with symbolism about the U.S. and the Internet - none of it good. I've made my own picks. Feel free to make yours. (more below) If you buy the idea that media is a mirror, then Time's decision to select Amazon's Jeff Bezos as its Man of the Year overflows with symbolism about the United States, the Net and the Web.

And none of it is good.

Definitions of greatness and influence are definitely becoming more fluid. Winston Churchill once held that spot, along with Stalin, Eisenhower, Einstein, Mao, Gorbachev and various inventors, world leaders and political figures.

How fitting that the man the nation's allegedly most influential newsmagazine chooses to usher in the new century has left this legacy to the world, according to the cover: "E-commerce is changing the way the world shops." Maybe the editors of Time need to get out more.

Is this really all that dramatic; the most significant person on the planet in l999? I shop online all the time, and it seems pretty non-revolutionary to me - I give them money, they send me stuff in cardboard boxes. Will historians down the road really be poring over Jeff Bezos life and times on Amazon to define the history of the l990's, or even of the Internet? That's a grim thought.

Bezos is mostly interesting because he's the perfect metaphor for the greedy, commercialized, insane atmosphere currently surrounding all things Web. Aside from causing the invention of some very nifty commercial software, and craftily evoking a wholesome commercial image, his big idea is to amass goods in warehouses - toys, electronics, books and music - and send them to people who want them. As is well known, he hasn't made a dime in profit, yet he's amassed billions. He's also attacking the very culture he's supposed to embody by suing competitors to block the spread of innovative software.

This makes him the man of the hour in terms of Web commerce, but it's not greatness or even influence. Can you recount a single thing this person has said or done that you will remember for years, or be talking about next month. Maybe one-click shopping is more significant than we realized.

All you need know about Bezos are the "Six Core Values" he preaches to Amazon's employees wherever he goes:

• Customer Obsession
• Ownership
• Bias for Action,
• Frugality
• High Hiring Bar
• Innovation.

When Bezos travels to greet employees, he climbs a podium, outlines the Six Core Values Speech, the cornerstone of most of his speeches, and then always - always - begins with the "watchword of his faith," according to Time: "Wake up every morning terrified - not of the competition but of our customers."

I was nearly moved to tears. This is stirring stuff in corporate terms, an ideological blueprint for the rampaging corporatism infecting the Internet, if for nothing else.

I might have come up with a different list, not that anybody asked. My man of the year might be Linus Torvalds, who - unlike Bezos - really did change the world, liberating computer software and the information it carries from one company's tyrannical grip for many millions of people.

This year, Open Source become something much bigger than a geek obsession, turning into a full-blown mainstream social and commercial movement. Tim Berners-Lee might be on my short list. He did, after all, invent the very Web that on which Bezos is taking in billions this year. Or Jonathan Postel, who died last year, but whose work to keep the Internet free and open a generation ago is right now bearing fruit all over the planet. "Q" wouldn't be my top choice, but he'd have to make the list, just for kicks. He loved making weird, neat stuff.

Or a group cover: some programmers and developers who truly are transforming not only commerce but the way we do almost everything, including think, learn, publish, watch movies, acquire music, and interact with one another.

I might pick the housewife in Dayton, Ohio who put up a website to give away free coupons and stuff and gets a half-million hits a day, (many more readers than The New York Times. Or some of the elderly people on Senior Net who use the Net to post farewell messages to their friends and families before they die.

Or perhaps the protesters who organized online, then went to Seattle and began the laborious process of taking on the fat, greedy companies who are choking individualism.

I might put on the list one of the creators of ICQ, Hotline, or even AIM, all of which are transforming communications, creating more new kinds of communities in a day than was once possible in years. Or a geneticist who, for better or worse, is slaving away on the Human Genome Project, and is about to unravel the secrets of human life.

Those are just a handful of the Net People of the Year I might consider.

Jeff Bezos doesn't come close.

How about you?

Comments

Pierre Omidyar, EBAY founder

[georgeha]

One, because he found something that really harnesses the internet, a worldwide garage sale (instead of selling under cost but making up for it in volume) connecting people across the world one to one.

Second, he did as a hack for his wife (collecting Pez dispensers) instead of trying to become a mogul.

Thirdly, Ebay turns a profit (unlike Amazon).

George

Al Gore?

[rm-r]

My Vote goes to Al Gore, inventor of this fine Internet, and architect of the e-commerce revolution.

Time man/person of the year

[gorilla]

This is a general misconception that the Time "Person of the Year" is for the best person of the year. This isn't true. the POTY is the person who made the biggest influence on the news of the year. In 1938 that was Hitler, in 1939, Stalin, in 1980, Ayatullah Khomeini. None of these are people I'd want to emulate, yet undoutably had great influence on the news.

Similarly, there is no doubt at all that Jeff Bezos & Amazon has had a tremendous influence on the news this year. Every news program mentions shopping on the web, there have been stories about Malls panicing, and for the first time, there is apparently enough money being spent on the web to make taxing it a subject of discussion.

Bezos' achievements may or may not be great. Personally I think it's too soon to judge. However there is no doubt at all that they have been the source of much news over the last year.

Give Bezos a break...

[costas]

I said this in the previous discussion, but I think it bears repeating: Give Bezos a break.

I assume that most of the /. crowd was on the Net before 1995. For those of you that were, which was the first website to conduct serious "e-commerce", selling real things, not just shareware or porn? Amazon.com.

And Amazon not only has become the de-facto Internet bookstore (when you post a link about some obscure book, how many times do you go looking for it on bn.com?) but also the gold standard for e-commerce sites.

Amazon may not be the world's best or most profitable Web company (incl. patent rant here) but noone can deny that Bezos had a vision and worked hard to make it a reality. And by doing so he legitimized commerce over the Internet which is really the primary reason, us techies are doing better now than any other professional group.

I was hoping for better memory from this crowd...

engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.