You, since 1999, or since ever?

Rafat Ali, one of the best & most successful bloggers in the world, today has a beautiful little story on the (or better: his) history of this year's Time Person of the Year - You, i.e. Him.

BTW - almost all veterans of the web unmodestly claim that they've been part of companies or participated in concepts that applied means for users to express themselves as early as '94, '96 or '98 (I'm one of them;-).
I think the whole phenomenon of user generated content is simply inherent to interactive media, or: media used in an interactive way. We've seen users add content to value added phone services since the mid eighties, and even more to bulletin boards, Minitel and Videotex services - well before the dawn of the internet.
And of course we sometimes see newspaper historians claim that a "Letter to the Editor" is the oldest known symptom of user generated content. Others may point at the polemic pamphlets of the 16th and 17th century printing press. But I think the glossaries of classic and mediaeval manuscripts are the earliest examples;-!
I think what makes user generated content so relevant to so many media consumers now, is that the newest media concepts & technologies make it so terribly easy to do what human beings love most - to communicate our impressions on what we experience, instantly.
It's what we started doing when our telephones were moved from the walls in our halls to our living rooms, it's what we did with our families when we watched tv, it's what we do with whoever in the world when we're sitting in front of our our pc's.