In the intro of his Phd (Defending my Bastard Culture!) researcher Mirko Tobias Schäfer writes about two TIME-magazine covers depicting the man/woman/group/… of the year.

The first one is the well known cover from 2007. A computer screen is depicted and in fact mirrors the reader looking at the front cover. The text on the bottom of the page says it all… “Yes, You. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world”. Though this image has been widely used (and thus maybe loses a bit of its importance) it still is relevant as it refers to the so-called participatory culture (popularized under the term Web2.0).

The second one dates from 1983. Time Magazine did not elect a Person of the Year, but choose the computer as the Machine of the Year. The man in front of the computer is almost blanked out and sits alienated in front of the screen not even touching the keyboard.

Schäfer sees as a reason for this emancipatory evolution from a ‘machine in control’ to the ‘user in control’ the development of the computer as a work medium to a life-medium (work, leisure, friendship, family,…) and the great amount of content which ordinary users can publish online.

These are not ’shocking’ conclusions, but the way they get depicted by these TIME-covers, covering almost 25 years, is beautifull & illustrative.

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