Omniscient wrote:
I actually agree with the decision to exclude them. What influence have they had on us? How many people live on the moon right now? Or even live in low Earth orbit?
The U.S. and Soviet manned space programs were political exercises in flexing their respective nationalistic muscles. The only real legacies we have of anything space-related are unmanned communications and GPS steallites, which were developed almost totally independently of either country’s manned space program.
Tracer:
Granted, none. But it was an inspirational moment which implied (if not necessarily proved) that humanity is capable of achieving whatever it puts its collective mind to. It has become a metaphor for outstanding achievement, as in “If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they…?”
Leaving aside the moon, there’s quite a lot that we’ve learned from and benefited from experiments done in space or data collected in space. We may not live on the moon, but we know a lot more about the universe around us than we ever did before artificial satellites were launched.
The Time 100 included many people whose influence on the 20th century were less important than the pioneers of space. Granted, you may disagree with those choices as well. But there’s a good number of those who I’d drop from the list to put Yuri Gagarin or the Apollo 11 crew in.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Uh, anything and everything that involves space is tied to each other. Sputnik and The appollo mission are both equaly responsible for the proliferation of every satillite orbiting the planet. The manned space program and the unmanned are not exclusive endevours. Most satillites use technology gleaned from both types of programs especially manuvering and communication packages. A large number of the satillites must be launched by manned shuttle as well.
Your assertions that only unmanned communications and GPS are signifigant influences, thats bullshit. There are things you use every day that wouldn’t be possible without the myriad of space based systems. Have you gotten a weather forcast recently? Been online? Used a cell phone? Watched TV/Cable? Made an international phone call? And the military operations that we monopolize from space have kept us as the single dominant force in the world and will for years to come. I haven’t even begun to list daily activities dependant on the greatest of human endeavours.
Omniscient:
Watch those “we”'s. Not everyone who frequents this board is an American. (I am; I’m just pointing out the slip.)
Chaim Mattis Keller (Born in the USA!)
The most influential person this century was, without a doubt, Vladimir Lenin. If you accept that the Cold War was the most important event this century, since it drove the development of nuclear arsenals, the space race, and so forth-then the man ultimately responsible for its inception has to have been the most important man or woman this century. Without Lenin there’s no Soviet Union, no spread of Marxism, no Russia v. US. This would have slowed technological and cultural advancement. Who knows where we’d be had East and West not competed for supremacy. Now, I’m no communist, far from it, but Lenin, I believe, was the 20th century’s most important person.
Um, it takes two to tango, so what could possibly make Lenin more important than his western counter part? Your validation centers around the cold war as a combined event. I’d also argue that by many standards the cold war didn’t exist before the advent of the nuclear bomb, in this case Lenin was long dead. Just more reason to lay the title on Oppenheimer.
It strikes me, although this might be invalid, that this whole discussion is only centered around the American part of the world. I mean, I don’t hear people saying “Well, it should be Kawabata Yasunari because he elucidated a traditional art/psychology of a people and Oe Kenzaburo because he proceded to destroy that construct and set about the remaking of literary tradition…” Obviously, however, Time is an American magazine and should deal with American interests… and America is a big part of the world, although not necessarily as big a part as its promoters and detractors might say. But still, I don’t think they should be called “the most important people of the last 100 years” if they’re really “The most importnat people related to America in the last 100 years.”
Having said that, I think that the development of nuclear weapons has had an effect on the nature of humanity world-wide, leading to e.g. the philosophy of postmodernism (I may be wrong here) and even anti-rationalism. I think that the people who were involved in those events definitely belong on this list.
APB9999 says: And DaVinci lived into the 15th century, although many of his great
achievments were earlier.
You Know it kind of proves your point that most folks arn’t too big on the15th century (that this is two weeks after your post) but Leonardo was born in the fifteenth century (1452) and lived into the sixteenth century (died 1519)
When I see lists like these, I tend to ask myself this - was the person replaceable? Did they do something completely unique that NO ONE else could have done?
Atheletes, astronauts, physical contests - there’s always someone better, eventually. No big deal.
Country leaders are a dime a dozen. If Stalin had been killed it would have been Trotsky. Revolutions attach themselves to whatever personality is dominant, so even Hitler isn’t that important. The base conflict that was WWII began in WWI.
Scientists are more concrete, but even Einstein had rivals doing much of the same work. He’s merely the famous one.
Artists are very individualistic, but all they do is paint and write books and play music and look pretty.
Businessmen are powerful and influential, but all they do is play with money, almost always with disgust for the common people.
I would tend to go for an artist-type, mostly for emotional reasons. I’d say Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) would do for the 19th century, but I can’t think of an equivilent figure for the 20th.
barton - How about Robert Fulghum? (Note: as a twentieth century Mark Twain, not as a top person of the century.)
barton wrote:
When it somes to Special Relativity, yes. Special Relativity was “in the air” in Einstein’s day and would’ve eventually been discovered. My high school physics prof. claimed that if J.C. Maxwell had lived 10 more years, he would’ve discovered Special Relativity.
When it comes to General Relativity, though, Einstein stands alone. He plucked General Relativity completely out of left field. We would’ve had to wait around at least another half century (if not a whole century) for General Relativity to have been developed if Einstein hadn’t been around.
Please – it’s J.R. “Bob” fuckin’ Dobbs!
I can’t believe the entertiners on the list! Including sports heros & the “tabloid celebrities” (Princess Di??,Elvis??? Lucy [Ball, not Leaky’s]???). I believe that Hitler was the most influential person of the century! By sarting WW II, He (inadvertently) brought about all the advances in science & medicine that came from, or were accelerated, because of it. Most of thoes would have been made, but without Hitler’s war, advances would have come much slower! We may have gotten to the moon much later had it not been for the early advances in rocketry, ment to kill & destroy, but advances, none the less. Huge advances in medicine are atributable to this mad man’s war. Manufacturing advanced greatly due to the “war effort”. Computer science was advanced due to the need to break the enemy’s code. Electronics & communications benefitted greatly. And the changes in the human condition that all the death & distruction caused by the war. If we seek a hero, he isn’t, but we are well ahead of where we might be without Hitler"s War! Has any other person so greatly influenced so much of our century in so many ways?
Zymurgist
I can’t believe the entertiners on the list! Including sports heros & the “tabloid celebrities” (Princess Di??,Elvis??? Lucy [Ball, not Leaky’s]???). I believe that Hitler was the most influential person of the century! By sarting WW II, He (inadvertently) brought about all the advances in science & medicine that came from, or were accelerated, because of it. Most of thoes would have been made, but without Hitler’s war, advances would have come much slower! We may have gotten to the moon much later had it not been for the early advances in rocketry, ment to kill & destroy, but advances, none the less. Huge advances in medicine are atributable to this mad man’s war. Manufacturing advanced greatly due to the “war effort”. Computer science was advanced due to the need to break the enemy’s code. Electronics & communications benefitted greatly. And the changes in the human condition that all the death & distruction caused by the war. If we seek a hero, he isn’t, but we are well ahead of where we might be without Hitler"s War! Has any other person so greatly influenced so much of our century in so many ways?
Zymurgist
But, I repeat myself!
If you say Hitler then why not Stalin? He killed more people, controlled more people, brought about the cold war, was responsable for the USSR getting the bomb and he would have started WW2 even if Hitler didn’t.
And that’s not mentioning how many countries became communist because of him.
On that note, I’d like to nominate Dr. Edwin (?) Teller for membership in the Top 100 Most Influential People of the Century.
The man is almost single-handedly responsible for developing the hydrogen bomb. Without the H-Bomb, which can be up to a thousand times as destructive as an “ordinary” A-bomb, it would have been impossible to annihilate an entire country in one fell swoop. The H-bomb made the ahem lofty goal of instant genocide achievable, and thus, we entered upon the cold war’s stance of Mutually-Assured Destruction (M.A.D.).
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
I vote for the person, or persons, who invented The Pill.
Also the conspirators who assassinated archduke Ferdinand (was that his name? I think so) to start World War I. That, I think, is this century’s most seminal event. The Russian Revolution, World War II, Hitler, Stalin, et al. were fallout from that war