As you may have already heard, Time has named its 2010 Person of the Year.  This year it's Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO and co-founder. 

I have no idea how Facebook came to take over my life.  For years I claimed to be too old for it.  Then I said I didn't see the utility in it.  Then I said it hardly mattered since my friends are also too old for it.  Finally, I started playing Farmville and that was the end of that.

Facebook, more than any other social networking site, has changed the way a lot of people interact with technology.  For better or worse, it's made everything social.  On the one hand, I feel much more connected to distant relations and people I last saw in high school.  On the other hand, am I actually "connected" to somebody I just contact to ask for imaginary goods and services on my imaginary Frontierville homestead?  And don't get me started on the perfidy of the "like" button.  It enables you to feel you've contributed something to a discussion without actually generating any content or meaning whatsoever.  I'd rather hear what you actually think about something!  (Also, you kids get off my lawn!)

Drop by the Periodicals Department to find out what Time has to say about Zuckerberg, and why they picked him over the runners-up (the Tea Party, Julian Assange, Hamid Karzai, and the Chilean miners - all good picks, but none of them have enabled people to invite me to their birthday parties.)  We've also got Time on microfilm back to 1923 and have many years bound in print.  Flip through and see what this venerable magazine has had to say about other cultural phenomena over the years.