Mark Zuckerberg — Not Julian Assange? — Is Time’s Person of the Year

Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. He edged out Julian Assange, the overwhelming reader favorite who — unlike the billionaire CEO of Facebook — really could have used whatever street cred still comes with this honor, as he cools his heels in a British prison cell.

It’s been a big year for the 26-year-old, who dreamed up Facebook before dropping out of Harvard a mere six years ago. The social network cracked 500 million members, “The Social Network” just garnered six Golden Globe nominations, and Zuckerberg himself has been the story for much of the year over Facebook’s fealty to the privacy of its members.

But if the editors of Time were entirely serious about the sentiments expressed in their letter — “There is an erosion of trust in authority, a decentralizing of power and at the same time, perhaps, a greater faith in one another” — the more obvious, though exponentially more controversial choice, would have been Assange, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Wikileaks, who embodies anti-authoritarianism and who also happened to top a reader’s poll in which Zuckerberg came in 10th.

Still, the fact that both have a strong background as programmers — let’s not call them hackers — illustrates how central technology, and more specifically, the internet, has become to our lives.

Zuckerberg joins a very short list of technologists who have won the award, including Andy Grove, the former Chairman and CEO of microchip pioneer Intel, and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, the internet commerce giant. And of course, “you” won in 2006, in a nod to the rise of the internet and the user-generated content revolution that has made YouTube and, well, Facebook, into cultural touchstones.

“The computer” won the the award for “Machine of the Year” in 1982. It might as well have been given jointly to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who shared the distinction in 2005 with his wife, Melinda, and Bono as “The Good Samaritans.”

Will anyone remember this in a few years? Probably not. Winners of such things are often tied to events that seem like a much bigger deal at the time. Does anyone recall why Vladimir Putin won three years ago?

In Zuckerberg’s case, the trophies he has yet to collect will likely be much more significant.