CNN: "Person of the Year: You"

In a news article posted by CNN on December 17th they were looking for the person of the year 2006 and found that it was all about social networking, communities, and collaboration on the web:

"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace."

An interesting year indeed, but I think it was also a year that started to bring great controversies and potential for conflict into the open:

• Social networking and privacy and protection of the individual
• Open access and copyright laws

I am not sure how and if they can be resolved. Privacy and protection of the individual is an issue that is particularly challenging as the personal demand for privacy changes over time. So it might well be that my utterances and ramblings of the past will be an embarassment in the future. Where is the forgetful web? Do we have a format for text, pictures, or videos that fade and disappear as time goes by? What about all the copies that are stored somewhere? Well, the future will be interesting.

Ulrich

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