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Mt Rushmore of Influential People who have lived [article from Time Magazine]

TheReff

TheReff

Rod Griffin
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Summer doldrums for sports now that the World Cup is over and no college sports

Jesus

Edison

Lincoln

Hitler
 
Link? Muhammad absolutely belongs on the list ahead of probably Lincoln or Edison. Pretty strong western bias at play without reading the article. I might make my list almost entirely religious: Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha, and Hitler (in that order).
 
TheReff said:
Summer doldrums for sports now that the World Cup is over and no college sports

Jesus

Edison

Lincoln

Hitler
Click to expand...

It is pretty much imposible to come up with a definitive list of top 4 but I guess it makes for good discussion.

What about Einstein, Newton, Gandhi, Martin Luther, Da vinci, the head of the Medici family, Steve Jobs, Princess Di, Madonna, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara, Picasso, Roy Orbison, Tommy Ramone.... etc... Some of these may be less than serious, but even some of those had far-reaching influence on popular culture...
 
Is there a more non-influential magazine now than Time?

What about bin Laden?
 
Lol at Edison over Tesla
 
TownieDeac said:
How so?
Click to expand...

It was Eisenstein who convinced the world in 1980 that it was so, but nothing really changed for over a hundred years after Gutenberg. If you're interested, check out Adrian John's The Nature of the Book (1998??) -- it essentially replaces Eisenstein's notion of a technologically determinist print history.

Not saying it wasn't a huge deal (and people like Gutenberg and Caxton had huge balls), but print wasn't particularly reliable until the late 16th century, I'd argue.
 
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

Excerpt

1.jpg
 
wakephan09 said:
It was Eisenstein who convinced the world in 1980 that it was so, but nothing really changed for over a hundred years after Gutenberg. If you're interested, check out Adrian John's The Nature of the Book (1998??) -- it essentially replaces Eisenstein's notion of a technologically determinist print history.

Not saying it wasn't a huge deal (and people like Gutenberg and Caxton had huge balls), but print wasn't particularly reliable until the late 16th century, I'd argue.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by reliable? I know it was still (relatively) expensive, but so much cheaper than scribes.

Interesting stuff nonetheless; I'd love to read the book, thanks for the description.

ETA: I found this graphic. It would definitely support your argument, though I'd suggest that simply because it took a century for the paradigm to truly take hold, it may have simply been ahead of its technological utility, but it would eventually make a massive, almost immeasurable difference on the shape of the world.

European_Output_of_Printed_Books_ca._1450%E2%80%931800.png
 
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TownieDeac said:
What do you mean by reliable? I know it was still (relatively) expensive, but so much cheaper than scribes.
Click to expand...

My argument was simply that it wasn't Gutenberg himself who significantly influenced world history. The notion that the printing press changed the world overnight is still pretty widely held, but it has been convincingly disproven. The book trade was incredibly advanced in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, and it was far more efficient to produce and purchase non-printed books during and immediately after Gutenberg's lifetime. Not saying printed books weren't sweet, just that if there was something that you particularly wanted, you'd be in much better shape looking for it in manuscript until the late 16th century.
 
And as for reliability: though it has been quite a while since I've read it, I think Johns dispels the notion that print was more reliable just because it was reproducible. Incunables and other early printed books were all over the place, and the notion of the modern edition was nearly a century away from being properly realized.
 
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