"You" named Time's Person of the Year

Congratulations! All of us who shared personal stories, thoughts, political opinions, public diaries, photographies, pictures, homemade musics and videos have been named Time's Person of the Year. This prestigious award is an annual event which Time uses to commemorate a major contributing person, group, entity, idea, and place to the humanities for the entire year, be it good or bad. However, commemorating the users of Internet is hardly attributed from the fact that an average user would actually use the Internet to do good deeds. It is for sure the majority of Internet users are much more able to freely voice their opinions and criticisms nowadays, but how many are putting it to good use?

Undoubtedly, the Internet communities has grown significantly over the past year. Take a look at our own community, the blogosphere. It is predicted that "the blogging phenomenon is set to peak in 2007", but how many of us are willing to stand up and fight for a better world? How many bloggers are indulging themselves in materialistic and consumerism non-sense? What exactly is "user-generated content"? Is it simply to bypass all thoughts so to spread non-sense, junk, empty, shallow, and culture-prohibitive contents? To simply imitate what other people, or news has to said without the critical examinations by ourselves? How can this be the "founding and framing the new digital democracy" when this is simply another form of implicit mind-control, modeled by the government, elite businesses, and major conglomerates?

Like what I mentioned earlier here:

Consumerism and empty pop culture are transforming you and me into mindless, thoughtless, buying-on-impulse zombies. One who is oblivious to the current worldly events.

The idea of the freedom of expression over Internet is no different than the whole pop culture of consumerism. One is no longer logging online to view the worldly events, unbiased news, critical opinions, and activism, but to simply indulge in non-sense such as sharing videos over Youtube, Myspacing, Orkuting, and etc. To perceive this as a new age in the "new digital democracy" is just rhetorically incorrect. It is not a democracy but a twisted form of Fascism, wasteful spending, mind-control, and propaganda. What "you" must do is to resist this form of mind-control and stupidity, and open your lungs to breath the fresh air, to see more broadly, and be aware of what is happening around you. We can no longer close our eyes.

This century will be the utmost critical in determining the survival of the entire human race. If we shun our eyes and ignore Globalization, and Global Warming, more people will suffer and die, and the effects of which will linger on to harm the next generations of you and me. It is up to us to determine how much these two significant events will forever shape and adversely influence the human race. No one else could determine this.

For those enlightened souls, other topics I've blogged over the year include:

1. End of cheap oil: 1
2. Global Warming: 1, 2, 3, 4
3. Human rights: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
4. Consumerism and wasteful spending: 1, 2, 3
   
5. Globalization: 1, 2, 3
   
6. Invasion of privacy: 1

Enjoy!