He’ll be unknown among all youth in 10 years if not sooner. 100% trivia in 200. His fame is due to his illness more than anything.
If I had to name one living person to guess, I would go for Donald J Trump:eek:
There’s just the barest possibility that he’ll be remembered as an iconoclast who reformed a corrupt political environment. Of course those living through it can see that whatever the outcome of his presidency anything good that were to come from it will be nothing to do with him, however you can’t predict what take our great^5 grandchildren will have on it. There’s no other named living individual I can think of I would predict higher probability for, and I give Trump less than 0.1%
Also the world today is very UScentric, 100 years ago it was Anglocentric, in a few decades it’ll probably be Chinacentric. Who knows what focus the guys compiling this in 200 years will be coming from.
Putin, for ending the American regime and bringing forth the New Russian Empire.
I know historians sometimes get things wrong, but how do you go from being the most corrupt politician in American history to being “An iconoclast who reformed a corrupt political environment.”
Think of the 100 Greatest People Ever from among those who are no longer with us. I’m not sure exactly who-all would be on the list, but when I think of the kind of people who’d be on it, I can’t think of anyone I’d bump in favor of someone who’s currently living.
Oops, my bad for even mentioning Steve Jobs. I hadn’t noticed the “alive today” in the OP. I guess I can’t vote for Carol Channing either, or John Lennon.
I could vote for Bill Gates, not for any great technical prowess (Windows Sucks!) but for his and Melinda’s foundation. Their malaria efforts have certainly saved millions.
I’d love to see a comedian along the lines of Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart for bringing focus to political and news reporting silliness, but it’ll be based on something they do in the future. If something Colbert says causes Trump to have a total meltdown/confession and leads to his removal from office, I’d take that as being quite influential.
Other entertainers? Dylan perhaps (although he’s not favorite). I’m straining to think of a current author or poet or musician who will be remembered 200 years from now.
I’m sure there’s someone alive today who will be in one of the greatest, but we don’t know his or her name because they’re under the age of ten. At least I can hope so.
I think it’s pretty likely the US will not hold the pre-eminent position in the world that it does today, but whatever you think of Obama’s accomplishments, first black president of the US has to be worth a couple sentences in the history books. Top 100? Who knows, probably not.
Here’s an exercise–looking backward from 2018, who stands out as the greatest folk? Florence Nightingale? Lincoln? Einstein?
he designed a rescue sub to save those Thai kids who were stuck in a cave
In American history books, maybe. But no more than a passing mention, I’d guess. And even then, the racial issue might have been completely put to rest for a long time, which would make “first black president of the USA” a minor factoid of little relevance. In any case, absolutely not a top 100, not even by a long shot.
I really can’t think of anybody living today who had any achievement so remarkable that he could be ranked in the list of the 100 most important people of history. We’re talking about a Genghis Khan level of achievement, here. Even among the dead people of the 20th century, I can’t see many names. I’d guess Einstein and Armstrong. Hitler maybe for starting WWII? But will even WWII be considered such an important event in 200 years? I don’t think that anybody would make it to such a list just for his involvement in the 7 years war, for instance.
He first got rich putting the yellow pages online.
Then he helped build a company that changed online banking (it became paypal).
Then he helped bring electric cars back into the mainstream.
He is a major investor in one of the biggest solar companies in the US.
He invested in Deepmind early, and now Deepmind is a major leader in AI.
His team designed the hyperloop, which other engineers are working on as a method of travel.
Space-X is making space travel cheaper.
Neuralink is working on ways to create a brain-computer interface.
And he is only 47 right now. He has another 40 years of entrepreneurship ahead of him.
I think his real talent is just using financial capital to hire human capital to solve pretty big problems. Call me a fanboy, but he is a very productive member of the human race.
Hmmm. Might be time for me to do another “Greatest Person Ever” contest, ala the link in post 24. Anybody interested?
Andrew Lloyd Webber. At least one of his shows will still be playing somewhere.
I expect Elon Musk will be removed from all of the companies he’s involved with or die of a drug overdose within a short time.
It seems to me that there are really three ways to get into these lists- the first way is to build a lifelong body of work that sets you far apart from the average person (a-la Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Dickens). The second is that you’re in the right place at the right time when come kind of historical event happens and your actions either succeed or fail spectacularly (this includes events that you yourself precipitate) This list would include Abraham Lincoln, William the Conqueror, etc…
The third way is to have some kind of “Eureka!” moment and invent, discover or develop some kind of device, object or theory that’s transformative to human society. Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Gutenberg, Einstein, etc… all fall into this category.
I’d think we can only really identify the first one of these- the second two are more a matter of luck and historical judgment.
Yes, but how does he rank against all the *other * people throughout history that you could say that of (Shakespeare, Sophocles, Verdi, Mozart…)?
I doubt people in the future will care about our current obsessions such as political correctness. Genomic medicine has the potential to be very important and it can be traced back to the discovery of the DNA molecule. He and Crick are the people most associated with DNA and will be famous for that forever.
Musk is likely to flame out and not accomplish much but there is a possibility that he could be either the father of the electric car or the person who gets humanity to Mars.
Looking at the Hart’s List of Influential Persons mentioned upthread, I see just five persons born in the 20th century, of which just one — Michael Gorbachev — is still alive. Since the Russian experiment with democracy is developing badly, Gorbachev may not belong on the list anymore.
The other four 20th-century names include two nuclear physicists (Heisenberg and Fermi), the man who inspired a country to land a man on the moon (J.F. Kennedy) and the inventor of the birth control pill (Gregory Pincus). Frankly, this seems rather a motley collection.
Bill Gates is probably the surest name for the future list. Perhaps Brin-Page or Bezos but hopefully not Zuckerberg will join him. I’d hate to guess what political leaders will make the list. The Hart list had five political theorists or leaders born in the 19th century: Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao. (Not a hopeful sign for what kind of statesmen become important.) I expect to see some people now alive also recognized by the future as very evil leaders. (Things may get very bad in the coming decade or three.)
Trying to be optimistic, I hope President Pelosi makes the list for her stunning achievement of bringing the American nation together after the tragic events of late 2019. :rolleyes:
Of the 5 20th-century people on Hart’s list, the only one which really belongs is Pincus. Really, getting control of the fertilization cycle is a truly transformative event for mankind and deserves recognition in lists of this sort.
Brin-Page is a good guess as well - really, it comes down to who the future “decides” to put the mantle of “inventing the internet” onto, ala in the same manner that many consider James Watt to be the “founder” of the Industrial Revolution, though in reality he was no such thing.
By “Brin-Page”, I assume you mean Sergey Brin and Larry Page? One problem is that’s two people. And I’d put Berners-Lee or Vinton Cerf above them.