Is Steve Jobs the 2nd Greatest Innovator of All Time?
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
I am a pacifist and a Buddhist, but I'm far from perfect and I very nearly hate Steve Jobs. A liar, a cheat, an arrogant, condescending ass who couldn't care less about charity or helping others if he doesn't benefit personally... And yet the media praise him and shower him in golden light, calling both the company he stole and he himself the grand innovators of recent history.
I'm a lesser person for hating someone, I know. Don't worry.
I'm a lesser person for hating someone, I know. Don't worry.
Softie researchers are almost always huge Mac fanbots. Then again, this is exactly the market Apple has been advertising to for the last decade. You know, the people who like to fool themselves into thinking they are tech savvy despite their lack of understanding of what an IP address or DHCP is.
Clarification please.
Innovation: 1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device
Invention: 1 : discovery, finding
2 : productive imagination : inventiveness
3a : something invented: as
(1) : a product of the imagination; especially : a false conception
(2) : a device, contrivance, or process originated after study and experiment
So an innovator does not equate perfectly with an inventor. Where an inventor may create something wildly new and unexpected, an innovator will get that new invention to market, to the public, and actually make changes with it. So while men like Turing and Tesla are incredible inventors, their inventions did little to change the way people live life. Men like Edison however managed to deliver their invention to the public in a way that made significant cultural changes.
Still, Jobs isn't anywhere near the innovator or inventor such a list would indicate. I would certainly rank Edison as the #1 innovator, simply because he actually got so many things done, pioneered so many concepts that we still use today. The #2 innovator of all time, would be the person who conceived the idea of interchangeable parts. Since we don't have the exact record of who came up with it, we'll have to settle and give it to the earliest guys that actually made it work. Honoré Blanc, a weapon smith, who devised a system where he could produce firearms with interchangeable parts for the French under commission of General Gribeauval.
Innovation: 1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device
Invention: 1 : discovery, finding
2 : productive imagination : inventiveness
3a : something invented: as
(1) : a product of the imagination; especially : a false conception
(2) : a device, contrivance, or process originated after study and experiment
So an innovator does not equate perfectly with an inventor. Where an inventor may create something wildly new and unexpected, an innovator will get that new invention to market, to the public, and actually make changes with it. So while men like Turing and Tesla are incredible inventors, their inventions did little to change the way people live life. Men like Edison however managed to deliver their invention to the public in a way that made significant cultural changes.
Still, Jobs isn't anywhere near the innovator or inventor such a list would indicate. I would certainly rank Edison as the #1 innovator, simply because he actually got so many things done, pioneered so many concepts that we still use today. The #2 innovator of all time, would be the person who conceived the idea of interchangeable parts. Since we don't have the exact record of who came up with it, we'll have to settle and give it to the earliest guys that actually made it work. Honoré Blanc, a weapon smith, who devised a system where he could produce firearms with interchangeable parts for the French under commission of General Gribeauval.
Well for one, most of Thomas Edison's 'inventions' were just him patenting over people's inventions and taking all of the credit, and secondly saying that Steve Jobs is then the second greatest is complete shit. And Mark Zuckerburg? Fuck off.
Forget Edison and Jobs, what about Nikkola Tessla, he practically invented the 20th century.
Nikkola Tessla was as close as we got to a real life Mad Scientist with out actually being evil.
The guy developed Alternating current (AC) electricity and all the equipment that goes with.
The Tessla coil, the first remote control ever, which was used to remote operate a boat in a giant pool at Madison Square Gardens. Tessla did things with computers and robotics decades before any one else.
The guy was rumored to make a real life Earth quake machine and Death Ray.
Earth Quake Machines and Death Rays blows iPods and over priced laptops out of the water in terms of development. Steve Jobs invented and developed NOTHING, he just has a very good Marketing department at Apple. The Real work with the original Apple computer was done by Steve Wozniak, as Jobs could not program his way "out of a wet paper bag".
We would not have the iPhone is some else haven't built the foundation for the modern electrical grid.
My other gripe about Steve Jobs is, during the same month no one notice or mentioned the death of Dennis Ritchie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie
Dennis Ritchie who more of a pioneer of Computer technology that all of Apple and Microsoft put together. Dennis Ritchie co-developed the programing language C, and a key developer for UNIX. With out Dennis Ritchie we have no Apple, No Microsoft, no Linux, No Java script. Programers would have to rely on Assembly still.
Yes I am aware Mythbusters failed to reproduce this mythical Earthquake machine.
Yeah, let's just all ignore Leonardo da Vinci. He wasn't ahead of his time at all. Also Steve Jobs... Built up into a god when all he really did was manage very aggressively. Honestly I hate Apple fanboys.
Ehm Steve Jobs yea great sort of but "second greatest innovator of all time" ehm NO.
But people have short time memory anyhow so in 10-20 years a lot f people is going to be "steve-who?"
Ehm Steve Jobs yea great sort of but "second greatest innovator of all time" ehm NO.
But people have short time memory anyhow so in 10-20 years a lot of people is (hopefully) going to be "steve-who?"
But people have short time memory anyhow so in 10-20 years a lot f people is going to be "steve-who?"
So agree with both of those pics people easily see and remember what has been big in media lately...Irridium said:Thomas Edison was a crank and completely screwed over Tesla, a much better man who would have made the world a much better place.
Tesla wanted to give everyone FREE energy. Edison wanted to charge for it, so he smeared the shit out of Tesla's name. This isn't even touching on all the ideas Tesla had, and could've probably done had he not been screwed by Edison.
Fuck Edison.
This is what I thought of:Dexter111 said:This is the second:
Also, to the creator of the survey, if you don't want people to bring up innovators from the past, say "best modern innovator" and not "best innovator of ALL TIME".
Ehm Steve Jobs yea great sort of but "second greatest innovator of all time" ehm NO.
But people have short time memory anyhow so in 10-20 years a lot of people is (hopefully) going to be "steve-who?"
well I call this a sham as Nicola tesla is not even on it, that guy was a motherfucking genius sonovabitch no doubt. If you look at the shit he developed, and the schematics that he devised, we wouldn't have citywide electrical grids, let alone nationally and internationally sprawling ones, we wouldn't have electric motors, or radio transmission and we wouldn't have fuckin Tesla Coils, which are fucking badass... just sayin, if you skip out on one of the most briliant inventors of all time, just... no... also Leonardo Da Vinci, most of the shit we see in use today is around because of his ideas, and he's also confusingly absent from that list, sorry but this is wrong, just.... wrong... Sorry, but I cannot accept that this list was made by people with brains, or access to research material of any kind, *cough* internet access *cough*.
Those were the options??
The only one worthy of that poll is Marie Curie, and maybe Bell.
Zuckerberg, Earheart and Jobs didn't innovate a single thing in their lives. Maybe if you count being a woman or putting an i in front of stuff. Edison did do a lot of stuff that he didn't steal, but to put him on there and not Tesla is just ridiculous. Grandin I don't know.
Where in all hell is Da Vinci?????
The only one worthy of that poll is Marie Curie, and maybe Bell.
Zuckerberg, Earheart and Jobs didn't innovate a single thing in their lives. Maybe if you count being a woman or putting an i in front of stuff. Edison did do a lot of stuff that he didn't steal, but to put him on there and not Tesla is just ridiculous. Grandin I don't know.
Where in all hell is Da Vinci?????
You really think Apple's computers don't support flash?Zacharious-khan said:
Perhaps you should do some actual research before you throw claims like "inferior to regular PCs in near every way". I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion when you're not even aware of what they can do in the first place.
For the record, OS X *does* support Flash, via Adobe's native plugin.
Now, iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad do not support flash, but then neither does any other mobile device in any decent capacity. While there are some Android tablets with flash support, Adobe themselves have EOL'ed mobile flash because it was terrible. So Flash on mobile devices is officially a dead end (according to the owner of Flash itself) - Apple just saw that 2 years before anyone else.
"OS X doesn't support flash". Man, sometimes you just have to laugh out loud at some of the ridiculous things people say without checking the facts. Next you'll tell me they only have one mouse button.
******
Back on topic, I think a lot of people are confusing innovator with inventor, but in either case, Edison does not belong on the top of the list. Steve Jobs certainly should be on there somewhere (but not first or second) - it's very cool to bash Apple right now as "all marketing", but to do so is very shortsighted. They certainly don't always get it right, but to dismiss Jobs out of hand is to grossly underestimate the effect he had as an innovator - especially in terms of identifying product markets and consumer desires. It's not an easy thing to do.
He saw the potential in the mouse, for example (NOTE: THIS DOES NOT MEAN I THINK HE INVENTED IT) when he saw it at Xerox PARC and even told the guys right there that they were sitting on a gold mine and asked them what they planned to do with it - "nothing" was their response - they saw it as merely a curiosity or another part of their research. Where the innovation comes in is Jobs seeing that it would change the way humans interacted with computers. His ability to *innovate* was in seeing the genius in other people's *inventions* and how they could change the way we see and do things. That is how innovators do what they do. They don't necessarily have to invent a thing, simply realise the possibilities (some often not even thought about) when a new invention comes along.
Consider the innovation in steam locomotion. Richard Trevithick did not invent the steam engine, but he saw the potential of making the engine smaller (an using high pressure steam) and using it instead of a horse to pull trucks of coal and slate - railways were not a new thing, but everyone laughed at him (smooth wheels on smooth rails? how does that work then?), and even bet him that his new "locomotive" would be a huge failure. In true ungentlemanly style the bet was never paid when the locomotive proved it worked stupendously well due to "a technicality" - classic naysayer behaviour, very quick to bash and crow, but they're very unsporting losers when proved wrong.