List: 'Time 100'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Lists? I’m drowning in them. Figuratively speaking, of course. This week Time magazine released the 2010 iteration of its ‘Time 100’ – ‘the people who most affect our world’ [1]. I wrote of the 2009 ‘Time 100’ here [2]. A fair bit’s changed since then. No fewer than 31 of the 2009 ‘100’ aren’t in the 2010 ‘100’, thus earning a place in the list that Time euphemistically labels Alumnae [3]. And so, of course, the 2010 ‘100’ includes 31 newbies (though I haven’t compared the 2009 and 2010 lists to find out who they are). Who cares? Not I. Ho hum. More interesting – but only a tad (yawn) – are the ‘Time 100’ spinoffs, i.e. the list of ‘Least Influential People of 2010’ [4], the Influence Index [5], and the online poll for the world’s 100 most influential people [6]. In the online poll, the top five are (in decreasing order) Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Han Han, Yu-Na Kim, Rain, and Lady Gaga. Isn’t that enlightening. The major league ‘Time 100’ isn’t in ranked order, but rather is divided into four categories – Leaders, Heroes, Artists and Thinkers – with 25 in each [7]. Anyway, that’s enough. I can’t bear to write about this nonsense any longer.

P.S. I apologise to you, dear readers. Last Friday I promised you that next Friday’s (i.e. today’s) list would be much less soporific. I’ve broken my promise. Big time. So today I’m making the same promise regarding next Friday’s list.

farmdoc's blog post number 379

Farmdoc’s Blog readers know I’m a list maniac. So I must  write about the 2009 Time 100 list – Time magazines’s seventh annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Wikipedia says the list was first published in 1999 when Time named the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. That list was so popular, i.e. it increased sales so much, that in 2004 Time began compiling an annual list of the 100 people most influencing the world that year. Making the list isn’t necessarily an honour – because recognition’s for changing the world, for better or worse. The list of 100 comprises 20 slots in each of five categories: Leaders & Revolutionaries, Builders & Titans, Artists & Entertainers, Scientists & Thinkers, and Heroes & Icons. The selection method’s described here. Time says influence is hard to measure, and it looks for people whose ideas, example, talent, discoveries transform our world; also influence is less about the hard power of force than the soft power of ideas and example. As for the 2009 list, released last Thursday: there are no Australians (I think); there are two Israelis (Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and entrepreneur Shai Agassi); Pete Seeger’s not on it (he should be); but Amory Lovins is (he should be). And the readers’ votes produced a farcical result: someone called moot polled 16,794,368, with the second place-getter way back on 2,316,378. Ho hum.