Time magazine has graced its cover with any number of presidents, presidential candidates and their poll-happy strategists. But no cover has featured a more powerful political force than Time’s choice as the 2006 Person of the Year. It’s you. By acknowledging the immense power of the individual in 21st century America, the magazine’s editors marked the dawn of the information-technology era and the ability of any one person to connect, communicate and create causes with many others at speeds and efficiencies unknown before the Internet. ‘It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before,’ wrote Lev Grossman for the magazine. ‘It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.’ The empowerment of an individual via technology is a trend that impacts all of American society, but especially politics, which in its rawest form is the art of turning the support of one voter into the votes of many. Abraham Lincoln […]