“But there was also a lot of brilliance: genius thinking that transformed information, politics, business, and medicine,” The Daily Beast writes. “For all the pain and the angst, centuries from now historians may well measure the last 10 years by our biggest brains and the transformative changes they set in motion. The Daily Beast thought we’d help them with a present-day measure of the greatest minds of our times: the 25 smartest people of the decade.”
The List:
1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin
2. Steve Jobs: Field: Technology; Position: Co-founder and CEO, Apple Inc.; co-founder Pixar; Why He Was Nominated: Famously temperamental and tenacious, Jobs spent the decade battling health problems—and changing the way people work and communicate. He also helped revolutionize design and marketing. Think about his products that weren’t around a decade ago: the MacBook, the iPod, and the iPhone. Think about the music industry without iTunes, kids’ movies without Pixar’s wondrous digital animation, Jobs is responsible for “just about everything cool about computers,” says Daily Beast nominator Christopher Buckley. Fortune magazine, for one, named him the most powerful person in business in 2007 and the CEO of the decade in 2009. Having survived pancreatic cancer in 2004 and, more recently, a liver transplant, Jobs rules his empire like a philosopher king. He often quotes the wisdom of hockey great Wayne Gretzky: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
3. Steven Chu
4. Hillary Clinton
5. Muhammad Yunus
6. Harold Varmus
7. Elizabeth Blackburn
8. David Plouffe
9. Jacqueline Novogratz
10. Elizabeth Warren
11. Jimmy Wales
12. Jeff Bezos
13. Kwame Anthony Appiah
14. Arianna Huffington
15. Manmohan Singh
16. Malcolm Gladwell
17. Nouriel Roubini
18. General David Petraeus
19. Lawrence Lessig
20. Will Wright
21. Karl Rove
22. Michael Bloomberg
23. Ayman al-Zawahiri
24. David Chase
25. Roger Ailes
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As with any list, there are some problems, but we’re satisfied that it took two heads to squeak out a so-called victory over the real, sole smartest man of the decade: Steven P. Jobs.
#4 Hillary Clinton
*snort*
Yeah, this list has credibility.
Now I know why I’ve never read that site and never will again.
There are plenty of smarter women than her that could have earned #4. I’d have understood if they put her husband at 4 more, though I think there are more deserving at 4 than either of them.
The whole list is a laugh, and #14 Arianna Huffington is a bigger joke than Hillary! Please.
List written by dummies.
It’s a rounding error!
P.S. I EMO PC
The Clintons had an article in the 90s NY Times mag, where Hilary heard Bill was running for office and dumped her boyfriend for him. This was all in college, so I guess her plan DID get her to the white house.
So many electrons wasted on such drivel — both the original article and the juvenile postings…
Yes, I know she is smart, but brilliant?
I wouldn’t say “smart” so much as “crafty”.
Ranking her above Mohammed Yunus though, is just asinine. Yunus is a hero.
-jcr
I could totally be Secretary of State.
I’m surprised too that our Glorious Leader, the Most Sublime President Barack Obama wasn’t first on the list.
After all, he’s Washington’s Mr. Spock!
(snicker)
Google founders #1??? Why? Any search engine would do the trick, they were just lucky, not innovative.
The smartest people were really all Americans?
Oh yeah, I forgot. The only real people in the world are Americans. I mean, no one really lives outside the US, right? Except for the Mongoloids.
What no Sarah Palin? After all she is going to be a the next Reagan….
Suffice of to say I have little to no respect for the Republicans. And the Democrats? Equal amounts of contempt there too: in short, both suck.
Any search engine would do the trick, they were just lucky, not innovative.
That’s not true. They had the insight to rank pages by the number of links to the page, instead of just counting keyword hits like Alta Vista had done. It’s a lot harder to game their search algorithm.
-jcr
Where am I on this list? I must be in the second group of 25…
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue wink” style=”border:0;” />
These lists server no purpose. How does one measure intelligence. I would argue that the entire global economic crisis was actually engineered by extremely smart people. The same that are getting the big bucks to “fix things”. You can use your intelligences for several things, and not all of them benefit biggest amount people. If you are really smart, you are the only one that benefits, and that is the problem.
My marketing guy used to have a plate frame on his Jag that read, “Liberals” on top, and “George Bush rules” on the bottom. The day Obama won the election, he removed it. Now, whenever Bush and the ‘pubs are brought up, he refuses to talk about him, and even threatened to resign if I ever brought them up again. Too funny. Not that I couldn’t find another marketing pro (this guy is pretty much just above average, but marketing guys are a dime a dozen and mostly have mediocre mentalities anyway), but I stopped bugging him about Bush and the great Republican fail since he seems to lose all motivation when it’s brought up.
But back on topic… Steve should have been number 1. Period.
The list is a crock!
All Google does is search and ads… good, but otherwise I dont see why he should be #1
I’ve been told (by someone in a position to know) Google was Bill Campbell’s idea after seeing what Page and Brin were working on.
Hillary dodged sniper bullets, remember?
And she don’t feel no tired either!
Oh I bet she answered a lot of 3 AM calls all right.
It’s getting to the point around MDN where any political angle there is to be shot has a 99% chance of getting called out in the first 5 comments. Seriously, people.
All such lists are a crock, this one is just more garbage in particular.
It should just be “my list cause I like Macs and Google, and dried up old lesbian liberals that wouldn’t give me the time of day unless I had a million dollars to donate to their campaign.”
Who gives a shit what daily beast says or does. Who the hell are they, a zoo outfit.
21 to 23: the evil section
a seriously wonky flawed list.
“Larry Page and Sergey Brin”
That’s not a smartest person, that’s two people.
looks like the person who wrote the list wasn’t very smart…
Larry Page sucks big time