Looking at this thread, I'm not sure we even could come up with a better list. There are a lot of misconceptions and misjudgments in this thread already. An artist or social commentator could probably go on and on about how Leonardo da Vinci influenced society and innovated art, and the same could probably be done to Socrates. The problem is that people look for immediately recognizable "innovators", even if they actually shouldn't be credited for what they did. That's why so many people are underappreciated and certain people are overappreciated.
Honestly, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison were more businessmen than inventors/innovators. I mean, okay, for Jobs you have the iPod, various ergonomic stuff, and a "user-friendly" attitude toward his OS, but it can definitely be argued that he was just as "evil" as, if not more than, Bill Gates, due to his popularization and propagation of certain unseemly business practices. (Not that Bill Gates didn't also do this, but... Come on, a chip that makes the OS not run if the computer isn't a Mac? Measures increasingly limiting the control you have over your own iPod?) For Edison, we don't even know how many of his so-called inventions we can really attribute to him. Plus, he campaigned like a true politician against the evils of alternating current, which was really superior to direct current and is thankfully what is in use today. With Bell, it's kind of funny because the telephone isn't necessarily his invention. Mark Zuckerburg is similar, but Shinryu already addressed that plenty.
See the theme here? The idea that "innovation involves using and spreading the use of an invention that already was invented" can be boiled down to business practices and luck. I just can't look at that and think, "Wow! These people were great innovators because they made the right moves with the resources they had!" I'm not saying that savvy businesspeople aren't innovative, but that this treatment really overvalues them. Notice how Nikola Tesla isn't on the list at all.
Temple Grandin is a weird case. I've heard that her slaughtering methods are not actually superior to others. I also think that she gets kind of overvalued precisely because of her autism. I'm not saying that Grandin is another evil witch or whatever, but we should always think before looking at any individual and saying that this represents autism.
The greater problem at hand is that we disagree on what innovation IS. I would say that innovation is something that changes society and/or our understanding of ourselves and the world, which does NOT mean something that most people perceive to have done so. I would consider both Galileo and Newton two of the greatest innovators of all time, owing to their "invention" of extremely important ideas that shaped how we see reality today. The idea that there is no privileged state of rest is huge because of the sheer insight it gives to various phenomena, and it eventually led to Einstein's special and general relativity. Newton formulated gravity and the three classical "laws of motion" and even invented calculus to do so. Einstein himself is in the same boat, as well as Archimedes, who can be considered the true inventor of the very basic ideas of calculus.
Honestly, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison were more businessmen than inventors/innovators. I mean, okay, for Jobs you have the iPod, various ergonomic stuff, and a "user-friendly" attitude toward his OS, but it can definitely be argued that he was just as "evil" as, if not more than, Bill Gates, due to his popularization and propagation of certain unseemly business practices. (Not that Bill Gates didn't also do this, but... Come on, a chip that makes the OS not run if the computer isn't a Mac? Measures increasingly limiting the control you have over your own iPod?) For Edison, we don't even know how many of his so-called inventions we can really attribute to him. Plus, he campaigned like a true politician against the evils of alternating current, which was really superior to direct current and is thankfully what is in use today. With Bell, it's kind of funny because the telephone isn't necessarily his invention. Mark Zuckerburg is similar, but Shinryu already addressed that plenty.
See the theme here? The idea that "innovation involves using and spreading the use of an invention that already was invented" can be boiled down to business practices and luck. I just can't look at that and think, "Wow! These people were great innovators because they made the right moves with the resources they had!" I'm not saying that savvy businesspeople aren't innovative, but that this treatment really overvalues them. Notice how Nikola Tesla isn't on the list at all.
Temple Grandin is a weird case. I've heard that her slaughtering methods are not actually superior to others. I also think that she gets kind of overvalued precisely because of her autism. I'm not saying that Grandin is another evil witch or whatever, but we should always think before looking at any individual and saying that this represents autism.
The greater problem at hand is that we disagree on what innovation IS. I would say that innovation is something that changes society and/or our understanding of ourselves and the world, which does NOT mean something that most people perceive to have done so. I would consider both Galileo and Newton two of the greatest innovators of all time, owing to their "invention" of extremely important ideas that shaped how we see reality today. The idea that there is no privileged state of rest is huge because of the sheer insight it gives to various phenomena, and it eventually led to Einstein's special and general relativity. Newton formulated gravity and the three classical "laws of motion" and even invented calculus to do so. Einstein himself is in the same boat, as well as Archimedes, who can be considered the true inventor of the very basic ideas of calculus.
dammit I took too long to post
