Most important pop-culture figures of last 25 years?

Cafe Society
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Who have had the most impact on popular culture in the last 25 years… Both at the global level and the American level (the two overlap a lot of course).

IMO the big three are :
1)George Lucas: Star Wars is probably the single most influential creation of popular culture in the last 25 years. Even if the later movies are disappointing.

2)Steven Spielberg: A better film-maker than Lucas but since none of his creations have had the impact of Star Wars so I would put him in the number 2 spot.

3)Shigeru Miyamoto: Many Americans won’t know his name but I think he belongs on the top list. Videogames are maybe the fastest growing pop-culture form and Miyamoto, maker of Mario and Zelda, is probably the most successful video-game maker ever.

After that I am not sure. If we include sports then Michael Jordan and Diego Maradona are obvious choices.

What about TV? Bill Cosby? Oprah? Seinfeld?

What about pop-music? Michael Jackson?

Does any popular writer stand out? Tom Clancy?

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Oops. I meant to put this in Cafe Society.

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What about Steven King?
As far as TV, don’t discount Matt Groening or even James Burrows

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I’d probably say Michael Jackson, which makes the fall to his current stature all the more staggering.

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Madonna?

Another reason for George Lucas to be at the top: Industrial Light and Magic, the digital effects company he founded, has had a tremendous influence on the way movies are made.

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“Another reason for George Lucas to be at the top: Industrial Light and Magic,…”
Good point. He has also got his leading game company LucasArts which has made some great games even apart from the Star Wars franchise.

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I think for the world of undeground literature Charles Bukowski was very important. He took the conventions of modern literature and destroyed them. Its hard to not find Bukowski influence in most modern writers and poets.

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George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, Steve Jobs, Al Neuharth, Fred Silverman.

Not that important: Bill Gates, Stephen King.

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Two from television: Lorne Michaels and David Letterman. Both made indelible marks on late-night programming.

(And who invented MTV?)

What about rap/hip-hop? I can’t think of an artist to single out, but I’m not an expert in the genre.

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John Lack was the Warner VP who got them (along with Amex) to pony up the financing for a 24 hour music channel. He then made the mistake of hiring Bob Pittman to develop the idea. Pittman did so, then proceeded to take credit for the idea of MTV.

As for rap/hiphop, I’d put Run DMC and/or Public Enemy on the list.

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Cecil Adams has continued to be a beacon of hope and truth for almost exactly 30 years now.

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Nolan Bushnell. (Atari and Chuck E. Cheese–there’s a generation’s entire childhood right there.)

Truth to tell, many of the most of the important contributors to popular culture in the last 25 years are nameless (to the public) engineers, geeks, inventors, and business types. Spare a moment to remember the neglected souls who brought the following things to the public:

Cable TV. In 1977, most people received only 2 to 5 TV stations. Now everyone has a million channels (yes, and there’s still nothing on.)

The mass market VCR. In 1977 your choice of movies to watch was extraordinarily limited. You could pick from the handful of movies currently playing in theatres, or see if there happened to be a movie on your 2 to 5 TV stations. Of course, if there was a movie on TV, it was crammed full of commercials and edited to shreds.

Specialty mail order. If you lived in a small town in 1977, buying decent clothes or an unusual book or record was next to impossible. The rise of specialty mail order in the 80s followed by the invention of Internet retail in the 90s has made an astonishing variety of specialist goods available to those outside the traditional culture centers.

Portable audio. This began with transistor radios, but really took off with the introduction of the Walkman and then the Discman. Millions of air travelers seated next to crying babies are grateful.

Cheap airline travel. With the airline deregulation of the '70s, the average Joe was finally able to travel to exotic places. This led to entertainment capitals like modern Vegas, Orlando, and Branson, Mo. (Umm, I didn’t say all these changes were for the better.)

The personal computer. Sure, Jobs, Woz, and Gates were important, but face it–if all three had been run over by trucks in 1970, the personal computer still would have been invented. An entire army of brilliant, unknown people contributed to the birth of the home computer.

The video game. In 1977, video games were just novelties in the local Quick-E-Mart. Today, video games are a huge industry that rivals the movie business in revenues. (Kinda, sorta, but that’s another story.) And the general public doesn’t know the name of a single one of the people behind 'em.

The Internet. In 1977 it was an esoteric technology used only by only a select few. Today, it’s the most dynamic media platform out there–even if it is used mostly to download pirated Britney Spears MP3s and pornography.

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“Truth to tell, many of the most of the important contributors to popular culture in the last 25 years are nameless (to the public) engineers, geeks, inventors, and business types.”
Good point although not all these types are nameless. Two who have had a huge impact : Akio Morita of Sony ,inventor of the walkman, and Tim Berners-Lee inventor of HTML and HTTP.