What your man in the street thinks about who has improved/affected their life and who actually has improved/affected their life are in most cases disjoint sets.

What your man in the street thinks about who has improved/affected their life and who actually has improved/affected their life are in most cases disjoint sets. Ask the man in the street who the most important computer innovators are and they'll say Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (who are/were business-men before anything else), you won't hear them mention John McCarthy or Dennis Ritchie (or likely even Alan Turing).