You don't mention the strongest case for Bush – eight years of American inaction on climate change that the world could ill afford, and committing most of his party to oppose any action on climate change for the following decade plus.
That said, there's also a contrarian case that Al Gore imperiled human civilization with one documentary. If you want broad societal consensus towards fighting an existential threat, the worst possible thing you could do is yoke the struggle against it to the approval rating of the as-partisan-as-it-gets former nominee of one major political party, who recently lost a bitterly contested election.
Other serious contenders: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier; Bashar al-Assad; Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (seven years of sharp curbs on deforestation in the Amazon, plus his anti-poverty programs); whoever's been researching solar panel efficiency; Tony Blair (whose decision to join the US invasion in Iraq may end up destroying both the British left and ultimately indirectly the UK itself, with international impacts throughout Europe).
I thinkkkkk you’re overrating Ta-Nehsi Coates’s impact. I never heard him cited or referenced at any BLM event/rally I went to in the 2010s. Lived in a Baltimore during the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death.
Catalyst for BLM seemed to center more around proliferation of social media / messaging technologies than Coates’s writing.
Maybe the way to answer this question is to ask “if this person hadn’t existed, what would be different”? I think scarcely anything would be different if Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t existed. Something like Facebook would exist anyway. If Donald Trump hadn’t existed I think that would matter more. There’s no obvious replacement figure.
Ta-Nihisi Coates is so out of place on this list I wonder what Noah was trying to accomplish by placing him on it. Just generally trying to get his name out there or get people to read his works? In no way has he affected American life to the extent that any of the others have, much less international life. Completely different categories.
I'd go the other way: Steve Jobs for the 00s, and Donald Trump for the 10s. You can say Trump is "just a symbol", but he's a symbol comparable to Joan of Arc in historical importance. And Steve Jobs is also an icon, but one who still defines how mobile phones are used. The case might be clearer for the 2004-2014 decade, but I don't care.
I do agree that Xi Jinping might make the list for this current decade (the 20s) if he stays in power, but probably not the 10s.
Interesting thought experiment! One slight flaw I'd point out is that the nominees (and the description of why they were nominated) kinda of vacillate between "important for America" and "important globally".
Like, I'm pretty very few people outside of North America care much about, read, or were influenced in the slightest, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (And I like this writing, I don't meant that as a slight, I just think he addresses basically 100% American concerns.)
And kind of similar arguments about, say, Jack Dorsey and the limited impact of Twitter outside of America. (Though I guess Twitter has gained a lot of ground in India, so it isn't quite the exclusively Western thing it once was.) But does it really have much traction anywhere in Asia or Africa? And if not, does that count against the nominee?
I guess fundamentally I'm wondering what the measuring metric is. The more purely utilitarian you go, the harder it is to argue against any Chinese nominee, just by sheer weight of numbers of those influenced. After all, even America's War on Terror had (relatively) limited impact in South America, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa from what I can tell. (Though I'd probably still give the nod to Osama bin Laden despite my equivocation.)
I'd also pick Steve Jobs over Mark Zuckerberg. I'd put Jobs in the 2010s and give him the nod. Yes, social networks have had a massive impact. But, living in a low-skilled, low-productivity country, I'm always struck by how many people just sit around doing nothing all day. Security guards at parking garages. Nannies while the kids are sleeping. The inexplicable number of customer service in every store. Their work has peaks and troughs and they are ALWAYS on their smart phones during the troughs. Watching movies, playing games, sending instant messages to friends.
And I always think, while the jobs still stuck, they are so much more HUMANE now that they were 10-20 years ago. What did those people do in the downtime before smart phones? That security guard sitting in his booth would just....stare into space, his brain totally switched off. It seems....kind of sad. And that's what's happened in developing countries all around the world. That's why I'd give the nod to the enabler of smart phones.
This is a pretty good list. I would just add that every head of state of a big nation should get an honorable mention like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Modi.
Also, if we ever find out whether a variation of lab leak hypothesis is true, that person would be number 1 for 2010’s.
You cant say you try to be non american centrist and then talk about tanehisi coates. Im from spain and *absolutely nobody* apart from a couple ultra nerds know who he is!
No Elon Musk? Granted I think much of the downstream effects have not even begun, but reuseable rockets, electric cars, and grid connected batteries are waaay ahead of where they'd be without Elon, and much of this goes back to the 2010's. As transformative as Job's primary invention is, Musk is operating in and revolutionizing 3 completely different sectors (space, transportation, power).
I also think that the day Elon launched one of his cars into space (2/6/2018) will only grow in historical significance as time marches on. A clear change in the arc of technology happened that day; commercial space arrived with an advertisement, the first real "better than gasmobiles EV" was on board. A Star Trek First Contact thing, where 2 big changes to life on earth (commercial space and electric cars) are well represented symbolically in the event.
Greta Thunberg is much better known than Tanehisi Coates, worldwide, but you could tag her to the 2020's as well, though her peak in Google trends is 2019.
This list is all but non-America centric. 8 individuals are American and Bin Laden is only there because of 9/11.
Putin, Xi, Modi, Merkel, Boris Johnson have been some of the main characters in international geopolitics. But no, you say Coates, a minor figure in an -almost exclusively- American movement such as BLM.
I really don't understand why you put him there.
Even if we were to agree that BLM is a global phenomenon and not an American (and in a smaller part a Western European one), Coates would not be the first one that comes to mind. George Floyd was way more important for that movement and is a more known individual internationally.
I think it's without question that Steve Jobs was more important than Mark Zuckerberg. The iPhone enabled Facebook's popularity. Remember when they were going down the HTML5 app route, until they realized that iPhone native was the way to go -- and now most of their clicks are mobile.
I think there's a case for Mario Draghi, seems like his counterfactual impact on the response of the ECB to the financial crisis was pretty enormous. I suppose counterfactual case of Hu is that there's some probability that a different leader comes in and massively rocks the boat, dramatically slowing down China's growth or takes a much more aggressive stance towards Taiwan, the US or Russia. If you want a really left field pick, there's a case for Dustin Moskovitz. I actually think he's a slam dunk if you think that animals have morally relevant experiences.
It's funny though, I'm having a much harder time picking someone out for the 2000s and 10s then I would for any of 50s-90s
- Mao seems to clearly win the 50s but there's a strong case for Nehru
- Mao maybe also wins the the 60s
- Deng wins the 70s
- Gorbachev 80s
- Rao wins the 90s
These all seem like absolve giants who counterfactually killed or bought into existence 10s of millions of people, and dramatically changed the lives of over a billion people.
And I mean 1900-1949 seem to have too many to count!
Einstein - 00s
Kaiser Willhelm - 10s but I think there's an extremely strong case for Tsar Nicholas and Lenin
Schrodiner in the 20s maybe? Maybe Stalin
30s is ridicilous - Ghandi, Stalin, FDR, Hitler, a quantum mechanics boi
40s also ridiclous -Stalin, FDR, Hitler, Churchill, Turing
idk, it feels like none of the options for today even get close to anyone in the 1900s. Xi in the 2020s might be the best bet if he takes turns China into a personalistic dictatorship.
You don't mention the strongest case for Bush – eight years of American inaction on climate change that the world could ill afford, and committing most of his party to oppose any action on climate change for the following decade plus.
That said, there's also a contrarian case that Al Gore imperiled human civilization with one documentary. If you want broad societal consensus towards fighting an existential threat, the worst possible thing you could do is yoke the struggle against it to the approval rating of the as-partisan-as-it-gets former nominee of one major political party, who recently lost a bitterly contested election.
Other serious contenders: Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier; Bashar al-Assad; Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (seven years of sharp curbs on deforestation in the Amazon, plus his anti-poverty programs); whoever's been researching solar panel efficiency; Tony Blair (whose decision to join the US invasion in Iraq may end up destroying both the British left and ultimately indirectly the UK itself, with international impacts throughout Europe).
I thinkkkkk you’re overrating Ta-Nehsi Coates’s impact. I never heard him cited or referenced at any BLM event/rally I went to in the 2010s. Lived in a Baltimore during the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death.
Catalyst for BLM seemed to center more around proliferation of social media / messaging technologies than Coates’s writing.
Maybe the way to answer this question is to ask “if this person hadn’t existed, what would be different”? I think scarcely anything would be different if Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t existed. Something like Facebook would exist anyway. If Donald Trump hadn’t existed I think that would matter more. There’s no obvious replacement figure.
Ta-Nihisi Coates is so out of place on this list I wonder what Noah was trying to accomplish by placing him on it. Just generally trying to get his name out there or get people to read his works? In no way has he affected American life to the extent that any of the others have, much less international life. Completely different categories.
I'd go the other way: Steve Jobs for the 00s, and Donald Trump for the 10s. You can say Trump is "just a symbol", but he's a symbol comparable to Joan of Arc in historical importance. And Steve Jobs is also an icon, but one who still defines how mobile phones are used. The case might be clearer for the 2004-2014 decade, but I don't care.
I do agree that Xi Jinping might make the list for this current decade (the 20s) if he stays in power, but probably not the 10s.
Interesting thought experiment! One slight flaw I'd point out is that the nominees (and the description of why they were nominated) kinda of vacillate between "important for America" and "important globally".
Like, I'm pretty very few people outside of North America care much about, read, or were influenced in the slightest, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (And I like this writing, I don't meant that as a slight, I just think he addresses basically 100% American concerns.)
And kind of similar arguments about, say, Jack Dorsey and the limited impact of Twitter outside of America. (Though I guess Twitter has gained a lot of ground in India, so it isn't quite the exclusively Western thing it once was.) But does it really have much traction anywhere in Asia or Africa? And if not, does that count against the nominee?
I guess fundamentally I'm wondering what the measuring metric is. The more purely utilitarian you go, the harder it is to argue against any Chinese nominee, just by sheer weight of numbers of those influenced. After all, even America's War on Terror had (relatively) limited impact in South America, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa from what I can tell. (Though I'd probably still give the nod to Osama bin Laden despite my equivocation.)
I'd also pick Steve Jobs over Mark Zuckerberg. I'd put Jobs in the 2010s and give him the nod. Yes, social networks have had a massive impact. But, living in a low-skilled, low-productivity country, I'm always struck by how many people just sit around doing nothing all day. Security guards at parking garages. Nannies while the kids are sleeping. The inexplicable number of customer service in every store. Their work has peaks and troughs and they are ALWAYS on their smart phones during the troughs. Watching movies, playing games, sending instant messages to friends.
And I always think, while the jobs still stuck, they are so much more HUMANE now that they were 10-20 years ago. What did those people do in the downtime before smart phones? That security guard sitting in his booth would just....stare into space, his brain totally switched off. It seems....kind of sad. And that's what's happened in developing countries all around the world. That's why I'd give the nod to the enabler of smart phones.
This is a pretty good list. I would just add that every head of state of a big nation should get an honorable mention like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Modi.
Also, if we ever find out whether a variation of lab leak hypothesis is true, that person would be number 1 for 2010’s.
You cant say you try to be non american centrist and then talk about tanehisi coates. Im from spain and *absolutely nobody* apart from a couple ultra nerds know who he is!
No Elon Musk? Granted I think much of the downstream effects have not even begun, but reuseable rockets, electric cars, and grid connected batteries are waaay ahead of where they'd be without Elon, and much of this goes back to the 2010's. As transformative as Job's primary invention is, Musk is operating in and revolutionizing 3 completely different sectors (space, transportation, power).
I also think that the day Elon launched one of his cars into space (2/6/2018) will only grow in historical significance as time marches on. A clear change in the arc of technology happened that day; commercial space arrived with an advertisement, the first real "better than gasmobiles EV" was on board. A Star Trek First Contact thing, where 2 big changes to life on earth (commercial space and electric cars) are well represented symbolically in the event.
Greta Thunberg is much better known than Tanehisi Coates, worldwide, but you could tag her to the 2020's as well, though her peak in Google trends is 2019.
This list is all but non-America centric. 8 individuals are American and Bin Laden is only there because of 9/11.
Putin, Xi, Modi, Merkel, Boris Johnson have been some of the main characters in international geopolitics. But no, you say Coates, a minor figure in an -almost exclusively- American movement such as BLM.
I really don't understand why you put him there.
Even if we were to agree that BLM is a global phenomenon and not an American (and in a smaller part a Western European one), Coates would not be the first one that comes to mind. George Floyd was way more important for that movement and is a more known individual internationally.
I think it's without question that Steve Jobs was more important than Mark Zuckerberg. The iPhone enabled Facebook's popularity. Remember when they were going down the HTML5 app route, until they realized that iPhone native was the way to go -- and now most of their clicks are mobile.
I think there's a case for Mario Draghi, seems like his counterfactual impact on the response of the ECB to the financial crisis was pretty enormous. I suppose counterfactual case of Hu is that there's some probability that a different leader comes in and massively rocks the boat, dramatically slowing down China's growth or takes a much more aggressive stance towards Taiwan, the US or Russia. If you want a really left field pick, there's a case for Dustin Moskovitz. I actually think he's a slam dunk if you think that animals have morally relevant experiences.
It's funny though, I'm having a much harder time picking someone out for the 2000s and 10s then I would for any of 50s-90s
- Mao seems to clearly win the 50s but there's a strong case for Nehru
- Mao maybe also wins the the 60s
- Deng wins the 70s
- Gorbachev 80s
- Rao wins the 90s
These all seem like absolve giants who counterfactually killed or bought into existence 10s of millions of people, and dramatically changed the lives of over a billion people.
And I mean 1900-1949 seem to have too many to count!
Einstein - 00s
Kaiser Willhelm - 10s but I think there's an extremely strong case for Tsar Nicholas and Lenin
Schrodiner in the 20s maybe? Maybe Stalin
30s is ridicilous - Ghandi, Stalin, FDR, Hitler, a quantum mechanics boi
40s also ridiclous -Stalin, FDR, Hitler, Churchill, Turing
idk, it feels like none of the options for today even get close to anyone in the 1900s. Xi in the 2020s might be the best bet if he takes turns China into a personalistic dictatorship.
Sorry but the most important person in the 2010s is an unknown lab tech at the Wuhan Institute of Virology…
I don't see much connection between Bin Laden and the Arab Spring.
Stephanie Kelton, whose contribution is yet to be realized.
Most of the others you mention, like Trump and Obama, changed nothing for the better.
Me