New Thought Leaders

.. right after I posted the 'Twittering Mobs' follow up, I saw a link to where NBC's News anchor Brian Williams considers Jon Stewart a big influence on New Thought'!
Now, you cant deny it.. but why did Williams have to point that out? Dumbing down in political thought is what I call it.

To make my point, look at # 3 'the Google Guys.

I wouldnt disagree with that choice either nor with making Steve Jobs #1.
The POINT is in the write up on Google. To read it you would think they freaking invented the search engine. They most certainly did not invent the search engine.
In fact I worked {79-95} forthe company that perfected the practical search engine.. and that was done in the late sixties.

Get that? There's a lot of irony in there. I spent 5 months in London helping set up Butterworths Telepublishing. When I wasnt there, I was managing user terminal projects and doing telecom development. Fifteen years later, Reed Elsevier bought Lexis and one year after that, dumped me out.

Some of the LAST things I did at Lexis was campaign against proprietary user software for the PC, With several other senior engineers.. I plumped for use of web browsers instead of spending millions on a proprietary GUI.

Finally in 97, Lexis gave up and went web-based. Accounting for the 'quick growth' referred to.

What all that means is, while Lexis probably still uses its own search engine with maybe some parts bought from google, I certainly know Google's place in 'thought leadership'.
What they accomplished was indeed groundbreaking.. not only a quantum leap in lookup speed but a way to actually make money with the process. something that Mosaic and altavista couldnt manage. But 'invent' the search engine? Hell no.

Same as Jon Stewart is a news man.. hell no. Jay Leno/David Letterman - purpose built, actually.

And dont get me started on Jobs!