I'm still rooting for A the guy who figured you could eat plants (Humans used to be carnivores, not omnivores) or B The guy who invented fireFFHAuthor said:
With C being the outsider : the guy that came up with living in houses
Is Steve Jobs the 2nd Greatest Innovator of All Time?
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
With C being the outsider : the guy that came up with living in houses
Well, everyone has already said, in some form or another, how I feel about how off-base the list is, especially the Steve Jobs part. Anyways, I thought the reason for the Apple snub of Flash was just as much about Jobs being pissed that Flash (while still a pretty crappy player) was leagues ahead of Quicktime in usability, codec support, and resource usage, and managed to crush Quicktime under its heel by simply walking into the room (youtube helped). As for HTML5, isn't Google the primary supporter of that?
Anyways, I submit for inclusion into the list (and I am admittedly less knowledgeable than many here), and I'll keep this at recent names:
Larry Page and Sergey Brin - Google
-For all the issues people may have with their search logarithm and ad support, where would the internet be without them?
Jeff Bezos - Amazon.com
-Here the idea of innovator is much clearer, seeing something done and making it work economically. In this case, what Wal-Mart wishes its online presence was: a one-stop shop for everything, at competitive prices, and people don't despise you on site.
Anyways, I submit for inclusion into the list (and I am admittedly less knowledgeable than many here), and I'll keep this at recent names:
Larry Page and Sergey Brin - Google
-For all the issues people may have with their search logarithm and ad support, where would the internet be without them?
Jeff Bezos - Amazon.com
-Here the idea of innovator is much clearer, seeing something done and making it work economically. In this case, what Wal-Mart wishes its online presence was: a one-stop shop for everything, at competitive prices, and people don't despise you on site.
This list has made me cringe with anger. ANGER I TELL YOU!
Jobs? Really?
When is that sympathy for his early death going to wear off? Sure, he did a few good things with the home computer, but is he the 2nd greatest inventor of all time?
Jobs? Really?
When is that sympathy for his early death going to wear off? Sure, he did a few good things with the home computer, but is he the 2nd greatest inventor of all time?
Gutenberg didn't make the printing press, he made moveable type. Still a huge friggin' deal, though. and wasn't he called "Man of the Millenia"?FFHAuthor said:
No offense, but Leonardo Da Vinci should be at the TOP of this list, where's everyone's sense of history? 
After reading the Steve Jobs biography, this man is undeniably the world's most innovative genius, apart from Da Vinci. Despite his bizarre behaviour, he totally changed the world and our culture through marketing products and making technology personal and must-haves.
After reading the Steve Jobs biography, this man is undeniably the world's most innovative genius, apart from Da Vinci. Despite his bizarre behaviour, he totally changed the world and our culture through marketing products and making technology personal and must-haves.
What the shit? Nikola Tesla should be there instead of Edison, and Dennis Ritchie instead of Steve Jobs.
If you do some research on Tesla, he did some pretty crazy stuff, some of which we can't do today. He was a bit mad and terrible with PR, but overlooked a lot.
I would consider Steve Jobs more of a marketing guy anyway, he didn't really take the technology places it wouldn't have gone anyway, he just dressed it up nice for everyone. More mainstream personal computing was certainly a good thing but not "2nd best innovator of all time" good.
Also, Edison was plagiarist and a liar.
Also, Edison was plagiarist and a liar.
No love for Da Vinci though? The guy not only invented everything, but he could also write with one hand while drawing with the other and he was a body-builder. He's the only person in history who pioneered in more fields, invented more things than everyone else, and can also beat up all subsequent innovators.
Could not be bothered reading through 11 pages of replies to see if this person was mentioned by someone else, but: DENNIS. FRICKIN. RITCHIE.
Who is he, you may be asking? If you consider yourself any kind of hardcore techie and you don't know who he is, consider your tech-geek membership null and void. He was the one who developed the C programming language. To cut down on explanations, here is an image a friend gave me.
Who is he, you may be asking? If you consider yourself any kind of hardcore techie and you don't know who he is, consider your tech-geek membership null and void. He was the one who developed the C programming language. To cut down on explanations, here is an image a friend gave me.
Honestly, the whole idea of "greatest innovators" seems like the wrong question to be asking. Innovators as they seem to be outlined by the poll (Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison certainly fit this description) seem to be people who hoard patents in order to create a profitable market for a product that they control. In other words, people who use technology to make boatloads of money.
Is this really something that we should be considering praiseworthy? I mean, Steve Jobs was an important figure in the technology industry, and innovation was an important part of what he did (his specific sense of vision wouldn't really have applied to, say, investment banking). But first and foremost, Jobs was a businessman, and his motivations were always directed in that manner -- towards earning the greatest profits. Can anything that he did really be said to even be a fraction as important as the work of, say, Alan Turing, the British mathematician and cryptanalyst whose work laid the foundation for the very field of Computer Science? Turing's not winning any popularity contests and you don't see people carrying around phones with his company brand logo on it, but there's a good reason why the award issued every year to select scientists for their contributions to computing is referred to as the Turing Award. That award, incidentally, was won by Dennis Ritchie (who was mentioned by others in this thread) together with Ken Thompson for their work in deveoping unix.
Similarly, I'm sure there are many great medical researchers working for big pharmaceutical corporations which have portfolios of hundreds of gene patents, but if you compare them with Jonas Salk, who not only developed the polio vaccine but insisted upon giving it away for free, who is the truer scientist? You see, in my mind, once you start thinking about profit, you lose something already of yourself. Sooner or later you're going to have to compromise on scientific principles of objectivity if you're concerned about what will make the most money for you, or your investors, or shareholders. Innovators, ironically, often thrive upon stifling the innovations of others so that they can take the credit for themselves -- something that Edison excelled at.
Maybe if you ask people who the greatest scientific researchers are, you'll get some real answers containing people who actually contained a brilliance going far beyond simple business acumen. At least, you'll get a list without Mark Zuckerberg.
Is this really something that we should be considering praiseworthy? I mean, Steve Jobs was an important figure in the technology industry, and innovation was an important part of what he did (his specific sense of vision wouldn't really have applied to, say, investment banking). But first and foremost, Jobs was a businessman, and his motivations were always directed in that manner -- towards earning the greatest profits. Can anything that he did really be said to even be a fraction as important as the work of, say, Alan Turing, the British mathematician and cryptanalyst whose work laid the foundation for the very field of Computer Science? Turing's not winning any popularity contests and you don't see people carrying around phones with his company brand logo on it, but there's a good reason why the award issued every year to select scientists for their contributions to computing is referred to as the Turing Award. That award, incidentally, was won by Dennis Ritchie (who was mentioned by others in this thread) together with Ken Thompson for their work in deveoping unix.
Similarly, I'm sure there are many great medical researchers working for big pharmaceutical corporations which have portfolios of hundreds of gene patents, but if you compare them with Jonas Salk, who not only developed the polio vaccine but insisted upon giving it away for free, who is the truer scientist? You see, in my mind, once you start thinking about profit, you lose something already of yourself. Sooner or later you're going to have to compromise on scientific principles of objectivity if you're concerned about what will make the most money for you, or your investors, or shareholders. Innovators, ironically, often thrive upon stifling the innovations of others so that they can take the credit for themselves -- something that Edison excelled at.
Maybe if you ask people who the greatest scientific researchers are, you'll get some real answers containing people who actually contained a brilliance going far beyond simple business acumen. At least, you'll get a list without Mark Zuckerberg.
Gosh guys obviously the best innovator was the guy who found out sticks made fire, duh!
Honestly though this is disgraceful, Steal and patent troll innovations then overshadow real inventors and innovators? Good enough for society! Honestly he innovated shit, he literally just did what people were already doing for years but people think he "revolutionized" them because he used stupid gimmicky hipster advertising and petty buzzwords to appeal to people who knew nothing about technology.
Honestly though this is disgraceful, Steal and patent troll innovations then overshadow real inventors and innovators? Good enough for society! Honestly he innovated shit, he literally just did what people were already doing for years but people think he "revolutionized" them because he used stupid gimmicky hipster advertising and petty buzzwords to appeal to people who knew nothing about technology.
Jarvis Heart, does anyone know what he did?
He made the first artificial Heart. It was a failure but at least he did something.
I think that perhaps a lot of you are not looking close enough at the topic at hand. Innovation not inventing, one is actual creation and the other is taking an invention and making it available to the general public.
In these terms Jobs and Edison deserve recognition but not as much as they received in this poll.
He made the first artificial Heart. It was a failure but at least he did something.
I think that perhaps a lot of you are not looking close enough at the topic at hand. Innovation not inventing, one is actual creation and the other is taking an invention and making it available to the general public.
In these terms Jobs and Edison deserve recognition but not as much as they received in this poll.