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Top Ten Geeks of the Millennium?
ywwg asks: "Everyone's doing the top ten this-or-that of the Millennium, so why don't we join the fray? Let's choose the top ten geeks of the millennium staying out of the past ten years. I'm thinking of the greats like Gallileo and Newton. What oppressed, nerdy, ignored, and shunned individuals proved everyone wrong? "
1)Leonardo Da Vinci, of course. He was the original hacker. I mean, damn, he invented the helicopter hundreds of years before it was ever possible to build.
2) Gutenberg. Printing press. 'Nuff said.
3) Issac Asimov. Genius. Scientist. Author.Ladies man . Well maybe not a ladies man. But he wrote the definitive book on black holes. neat-o.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
The man basically invented the alternate current power supply system we use today, he invented the radio (yes, Tesla invented the radio)... Did much work with transformers... I mean come on, the man built a remote controlled boat 100 years ago... I forget all the other great stuff he did. But he was really underappreciated.
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
the guy who invented 0 (maybe that was the previous millenium)
Yes, it was. It was around 650 ad, if i recall correctly.
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
leonhard euler (1707-1783), for giving us so damned much mathematical output that we still haven't published it all afaik, and he's been dead for over 200 years, hardly even slowing down after he lost his vision. probably his coolest deed is proving that e^(pi*i) - 1 = 0, linking five of the most basic mathematical constants into one simple equation, as well as providing a link between the real and complex planes.
other candidates imho would include leonardo da vinci, thomas edison, blaise pascal, and my dog waffles.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
In no particular order and just a few minutes of thought:
DaVinci, for reasons already stated.
Michaelangelo - master architect and builder as well as painter and sculptor. There's real engineering in that art.
Gallileo; what could be more geek than dropping cannonballs off a tower "as an experiment" or building a telescope from scratch. And he got in trouble with the thought police a few centuries before PC came into vouge.
Gutenberg - where would OReilley be without *his* invention?
James Watt - made steam power practical leading to the Industrial Revoultion, etc...
Bejamin Franklin, for being a geek with style, fame, *and* political clout.
Samuel Morse - telegraphy became the "internet" of the last century (read the book "The Victorian Internet" and see if you agree)
Thomas Edison - quintessinal hardware hacker, entrepreneur, even suffered from NIH [not invented here] at times and wasn't above stealing a trade secret or two [so was he a cracker as well as a hacker?].
Otto Diesel - practical internal (infernal?) combustion engine, and all the cars, ships, planes, oil business, smog, etc. that came from it.
Enrico Fermi - "So you want this grant to build an atomic pile *WHERE*?!"
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Ignaz Semmelweiss, physician who discovered that washing one's hand before delivering a baby could cut maternal deaths by over 90%. For this, he was ostracized by his peers, who didn't want to believe they'd been killing their patients, and wound up in an insane asylum. A true geek, he stuck to his principle to the end, and ultimately prevailed. And, as a true ubergeek, had the unforeseen consequence of his new technology creating a population explosion....
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Experimenters, tinkerers, inventors, pioneers, and fine exemplars of the geek spirit -- they made the machines that led us into flight and into spaceflight.
--Jim
From http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/index.h tm:
Another site: http://www.apc.net/bturner/tesla.htmHow many of us have our jobs, hobbies and/or avocations without the inventions of this man? He should also go on the all-time hackers list as well. I just wish he could have gotten that transmission-of-electricity-through-the-air thing working. :)
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
First of all, I'd like to say that I intensely dislike this stupid "top ten" nonsense. It reminds me of an anecdote about Enrico Fermi, when he arrived in America around WWII. They told him that somebody or the other was "a great general", to which he replied "what is the definition of a great general?" They figured that it was a general who had won five consecutive battles. He then pointed out that, if all there were no "great generals" and all armies had equal forces, 1/32 - roughly 3% - of all generals would have won five consecutive battles, solely by luck. "Now, has any of them ever won /ten/ consecutive battles...?"
Also, I should point out that, even though Newton might have been a geek, he was by no means "shunned" or "opressed". He was arrogant, ambitious and ruthless. He was Master of the Mint, Fellow of the Royal Society, and very powerful on the political establishment.
None of this means that Newton was not a great man. It just means that he definitely does not fit the "outcast genius" stereotype.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I am sad to see that the late Stanley Kubrick has not been mentioned thus far.
A true geek in the strictest sense of the word, he is largely considered to be one of the greatest film directors to ever live. To watch a Kubrick film is to see art of the first order in cinematic form. He is the Michaelangelo of our times. Symbolism and imagination drip from every Stanley Kubrick work, while a flawless technical precision executes every scene and shot perfectly. A clear sanity in vision illustrates an insane world around us. Every film of his is a masterpiece. And while we have McDonald's directors ruling Hollywood today, pumping out mediocre film after mediocre film, Kubrick was always patient and expert, taking years to complete a film, but always cost conscious. An expensive film != a great film. He knew that all too well.
That is not even to mention the effect he has had on all geeks that have come since him. What computer scientist in artificial intelligence isn't inspired by HAL from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Kubrick elevated science fiction film from men dressed in foam lizard suits to a legitimate expressive art form.
Scientists != geeks. There's more to it than that. And Kubruck is most definitely a geek. If Stanley Kubrick isn't a geek of the millennium, (if only to represent the art of film) then who is?
Dave
I don't know about you people, but I don't think anyone fits the bill of "geek" as it is meant today like Steve Wozniak. When you think of his accomplishments, and how well he has always carried himself, he's gotta be my top vote.
When Edison's DC generators were found incapable of sending electricity for any useful distance, Nicolai Tesla's AC generators and his patents were 'leased' to a man named Westinghouse, who manufactured generators and created the enabling technology (electric power) which has made possible radio, television, computers, MTV, CD's, lighted houses, street lamps, stop lights, Times Square, the transistor, logic gates, embedded computers, linux, perl, basic, cobol, electric typewriters, most modern manufacturing, space launches, satellites, and therefore their products such as Elvis, REM, Puff Daddy, Milton Berle, televised boxing matches, Star Wars, and more. The drive for dominance between DC and AC as methods was intense: The Edison faction, trying to get DC accepted, publically electocuted a dog with AC to show the danger of alternating current. Tesla also held initial patents and built working devices for many radio devices, a form of television, sonar, radio-controlled guidance systems, a source of illumination which had no obvious point of origin, photography of the 'kirlian aura', and wireless transmission of electric power. And let us not forget the Tesla Coil, without which 'It's Alive! It's Alive!' would probably have never been possible (Frankenstein). Tesla was an unusual man. The scent of peaches made him pass out and he required exactly thirteen napkins at each meal. He suffered from fevers as a child. He reported that his idea of electricity was fundamentally different from all current views, and he could build his machines in his mind to test them with the consequence that his first physical implementation frequently worked perfectly. He is said to have built massive coils of wire whose diameter may have been as large as a foot, and which coils used the thickness of the earth as a resonant device -- these coils on one occasion were said to produce small earthquakes. His sale of generator patents to Westinghouse contained a payment of so many cents per kilowatt, but Westinghouse later induced Tesla to give up this payment. Tesla did so. He died penniless in the late 40's. Tesla gave us our world as we know it. Tesla's later experiments concerned a set of devices he'd invented which would ring the globe, providing free electric power for the entire world's population. It actually worked. You could stick light bulbs into the ground a half mile from his laboratory, and they would light up. Needless to say, Tesla's plans for free power for the world didn't sound so great to Westinghouse and Company. Strangely, a fire destroyed his laboratory and all notes with it, and this was the end of free power for the world. Let's tip the hat to Nicolai Tesla ... the original open source kind of guy, and the man who enabled every day you experience. Thank you, Mr. Tesla
== buddha is as buddha does ==
There have been some real good references, including Godel and especially Gauss, but there are two that at least deserve discussion before the matter is laid to rest (as if it everwill :)
Bernhard Riemann - He "invented" the integral as most readers here would know it, worked in multiple dimensions (impetus for Einstein's work), and other general cool math stuff (important stuff if you ask me).
Evariste Galois - Has to be number 1. He died at age 21 in a duel that he knew he was going to lose. The night before he wrote down as much new math as he could trying to impart his impressive genius to the rest of us. His contributions led to the only area of math named after a person (Galois Theory obviously). Why was he a geek. Well, his reckless, anti-social demise was pretty much the ultimate fuck you to the rest of us. If he had lived algebra would be an entirely different subject today.
Just sticking up for the mathematicions a bit.
Ben
If they're not known by a single name, they don't qualify for my list. (OK, you may not know Ignaz Semmelweis by his last name, but you should. Click on the link.) Based on the criteria listed in this post, he qualifies before most of the others.
My only question is whether Einstein should be there, on account of the large number of erroneous things being said about him (even in "Time"). He didn't invent the bomb. (Didn't have anything to do with it, except signing a letter to Roosevelt. He rejected the underlying science to his death.) I use two criteria for including him: the originality of his ideas (although quantum mechanics is equally daring in its willingness to question our deepest-held ideas) and the fact that without him no one else would have arrived at the same conclusions for decades (perhaps centuries).
The Wright brothers probably deserve consideration (but do you count them as one or two on the list?) The same counting problem occurs with the quantum-mechanicians. Once you say "Bohr," you just about have to include Schroedinger and then the floodgates are open.
Based on the criteria given, you'd have to consider Dr. Charles R. Drew, who invented blood transfusion (with others) and who was then died because he was refused a transfusion at an all-white Southern hospital because he was black.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Word Frequency
tesla 36
turing 28
Einstein 26
Newton 24
vinci 22
Copernicus 13
leonardo 11
edison 11
Linus 9
Gutenberg 9
Galileo 9
Babbage 9
_________________________
Think about this. Gutenberg was the one who made the printing press a practical invenion by introducing movable type. This fact is what kick-started the freer flow of information, which is how we humans have come to be defined. daVinci, Curie, Einstein, Hawking, Torvalds... all great in their own respects, but had Gutenberg not come before them they would be nothing. After Gutenberg, then Alexander Graham Bell, no so much for the telephone as the telephone line. Think of just how many devices now depend on telephone lines. Also consider this: while a telephone line may have more wires n it now, the basic ideas haven't changed since the device was first invented. Now that is impressive. After Bell, then Babbage. The one whose ideas would later inspire the modern computer. Only the first of his three machines (Difference Engine, Analytical Engine, "Dream Engine") were ever built, but the ideas carried on. After Babbage, then A and B (whose names I can't remember, but they built the A-B-C, the first electronic computer, predating its more famous descendant the ENIAC by one or two decades). Then the people behind ENIAC, who made the term a household word. Then Admiral Grace Hopper, who helped with the first programming languages. Then the inventors of the transistor, then the the microprocessor. I'm sure you see where I'm going here. Keep the list going, and you'll reach the original writers of UNIX, the Xerox PARC team, Jobs and Wozniak, and so on until you reach Torvalds. The point: The top geeks of this century have done great things indeed, but we shouldn't forget who made these possible. And it all started, more or less, with Gutenberg.
I hate to be the discordant note here, especially with all the great suggestions as to the Top Ten, but...
:-)
:-p )
Has it occurred to anyone else that we may be taking this whole "geek" thing a bit far? I mean, sure, there have been a good number of geniuses, of which many were oppressed or ignored, etc. But it seems as if we're slapping this "geek" label on anyone who made a name for themselves in a non-"popular" area. Especially if they were ignored at first, or oppressed at some point (which many were). It's as if we're this big self-conscious group looking for validation, saying "hey look! so-and-so-genius was ignored and unpopular, so hey I'm like them!". This, despite the fact that we know so little about the lives (especially of a personal nature) of many of these millenial "geeks". We don't know, and often don't have the information to make a good educated guess, as to whether they would have even agreed with the label.
I guess this kinda ties into what I see as a certain ambiguity as to the meaning of the word "geek" today. You've got some people using it to refer to any unpopular or outcast person; others who use it to refer to just about any intelligent and usually motivated individual; and some who mean some mix of the two. How to know which is meant?
So, my question to you all is, am I making any sense here? Does anyone else see something a little odd in this latching onto every genius and referring to them as a "geek" (whatever that means)? Anyone think I'm full of hot air (if so, do try to enlighten me
(BTW, I'm an engineer not a pyschoanalyst, so forgive any psycho-babble