5 ms·
Only one computer scientist in the world's top 100 public intellectuals
- brent 18y ago... and zero mathematicians.
- osipov 18y agoI don't have much faith in their selection process. Their list of economists includes the man who guided Russian economy into a 40% GDP drop. >Yegor Gaidar, Russia, Economist, politician >Gaidar was Boris Yeltsin’s acting prime minister from June 15 to December 14, 1992 and a proponent of “shock therapy” for the Russian economy.
- asdflkj 18y agoYou left out: >He is a contributing editor to FP. That should make clear both the quality and the nature of this publication.
- rp 18y agoSo, who are some computer scientists (and mathematicians) that should be on the list? That is a loaded but honest question.
- technoguyrob 18y agoGrothendieck, Knuth, Paul Cohen, Terence Tao, Shing-Tung Yao. In my opinion Godel was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, but he's dead.
- wheeler 18y agoHow can you possibly think that Grothendieck should be on a list of public intellectuals?
- mechanical_fish 18y agoI'm not nominating anyone. I don't think being named to the list of "100 random names, compiled over a round of beers at a Foreign Policy office party, that make you sound sophisticated when you drop them" is a very high honor.
- geebee 18y agoThat's an interesting question. I think that the software world (distinct from CS or Math) does have "public intellectuals", though they are rarely known outside software. I'd say that Eric Raymond, David Heinemeier Hansson, Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, Kathy Sierra, and Linus Torvalds are "public intellectuals" within this space. Many of these folks have impressive tech accomplishments, but people know who they are largely because they've read their writings/essays about software (ie., I'm distinguishing people who are known purely on the basis of code). It's very difficult to become a software public intellectual without reasonably impressive technical achievements, though I'd probably say Lawrence Lessig is in the club.
- huherto 18y agoIMHO: Linus, Alan Kay, Alan Turing
- presty 18y agoMarvin Minsky, John McCarthy and Donald E. Knuth,
- mattrepl 18y agoThere are two biologists, one physicist, one neuroscientist, and one medical scientist. The list is dominated by individuals with careers in politics, religion, literature, philosophy, and history.
- krschultz 18y agoI agree, a list of the Top 100 Intellectuals would be dominated by mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and probably a hacker or to, but this list is titled The Top 100 PUBLIC Intellectuals, i.e. public policy, so I wasn't expecting any different.
- sfk 18y agoThe title of the list is a gross misnomer. Half of the people on the list are political activists of some sort. Take Barenboim. Why is he an intellectual? He is a fantastic pianist, a (IMHO) mediocre conductor and an activist for peace in the middle east. Take Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She is a Dutch politician who build her entire career upon the fact that she has suffered a lot being raised as a female Muslim. She is definitely not what I would call an intellectual.
- drios 18y agoIMHO Mandelbrot, Prigogine, Mccarthy and Minsky should be on that list and by the way Baremboin was born in Argentina.
- DaniFong 18y agoThere's also Noam Chomsky
- kkshin 18y agoFor better or for worse, the modern connotation of an intellectual is heavily slanted towards the matters of humanities and arts. I've had the pleasure of studying under some great computer scientists, but unfortunately, although geniuses in their field, very few of them could be considered an "intellectual" in the current form of its meaning.
- neilc 18y agoNote that the list is of public intellectuals -- intellectuals who play a prominent role in public discourse. Most great computer scientists tend to stay out of the public realm, for the most part -- and perhaps with good reason.
- cia_plant 18y agoThe emphasis is obviously on the "public" more than the "intellectual." Witness Thomas Friedman's place on the list!
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- menloparkbum 18y ago"He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius." http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
- mynameishere 18y agoThey left off Charles Murray who incidentally derived a novel way of measuring intellectual influence semi-objectively. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Accomplishment
- mdemare 18y agoI find it very hard to believe that Slavoj Zizek is better known, or more influential, than, say, Linus, RMS, PG, Joel, ESR or many others in our field. Silly, vague, badly defined list.