I have the year-end copy of Time in front of me with a reflective mylar screen on the cover, indicating that “You” are the Person of the Year. Their premise is that the masses have taken over the Information Age in this era of Web 2.0 and are dictating what’s important, who gets elected, what’s popular, etc.

I’ve heard a lot of criticism about their choice of POTY being a cop-out, but I disagree. Certainly they could have picked an individual (I would have chosen Shiite leader al-Sadr, whose militias have made an counter-insurgency into a civil war and negated the traction the elected Iraqi government was making), but the impact of the user-generated media can’t be overstated. In a post earlier this year, I amazed at how my media-consumption habits have changed, from gate-keeper based to this 2.0 model. I am part of the blogging revolution (with only 1.5 million blogs more popular than mine (hmmm, out of 6 B people, not too shabby!), I make podcasts for my job, and soon for my blog, post comments often, and consume much more new media than old.

I know some old-media types are pretty nervous about their loss of control, but they need not worry. I still don’t see anyone soon taking the New York Times’ place as the “template-maker” for the MSM, which dictates what’s on CNN, and NBC Nightly News. From there will be the mass discussion about the minutia of “macaca” or if John Kerry was telling a joke. However, given the speed that things are happening in this era (YouTube didn’t exist two Christmas’s ago), we may be looking at Web 3.0 way before the decade ends.

Wouldn’t it be cool to figure out what that is? Then you could get your picture on the cover of Time magazine.