Each year, Time Magazine compiles a list of the 100 most influential people of the year, spanning politics, entertainment, and everything in between. One entry that is particularly noteworthy this year is Shigeru Miyamoto, the Senior marketing director at Nintendo and the General manager of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD). You might better know him as the creator of Super Mario.
He has never been featured on a Time front cover nor has he ever made this top 100 list. I guess with the sudden surge in interest in Nintendo — particularly surrounding the Nintendo Wii, and to a lesser extent, the touch-sensitive Nintendo DS Lite. I’m a self-proclaimed Nintendo fanboy, so clearly I’m glad to see Shiggy not only make the list, but currently hold the #2 spot overall. He lags behind Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (who I also like).
Here are the top ten according to rank:
The only name that I didn’t recognize in the top ten was Steve Spangler. With a quick Wikipedia search, I discovered that Spangler was the guy that tossed a Mentos into a Diet Coke bottle. How exactly is that influential?
When you look at who got the most votes, though, the picture is a little different:
Who are those first two guys with loads and loads of votes? Well, Bhumibol Adulyadej is also known as Rama IX, the current king of Thailand. He is very well loved in his home country, but he was not born in Thailand; he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nonetheless, Bhumibol “is the world’s longest-serving current head of state and the longest-serving monarch in Thai history.”
Never heard of Rain? I was surprised that people had such a strong opinion of precipitation, and then I learned that Rain (real name Jung Ji-Hoon) is a Korean pop artist. He’s well known in several Asian countries but is a relative nobody everywhere else.
And where’s the war-monging George W. Bush in all of this? He’s ranked #42. Remember this is not supposed to be a popularity contest, per se. It’s about how influential the person is.
Anyways, I encourage you to go over to Time and vote on who you think are the most influential people of the year. Vote for Shiggy!
Wow…consider the ramifications of Sidney Crosby being #4. Will Americans finally understand hockey!?
Check out the dropoff after Steven Colbert! That’s a 3x difference between him and the Nintendo guy.
Up until now, I wasn’t sure if Colbert at Eclipsed John Stewart. Now Stewart is getting a taste of what Craig Kilborn felt.
I am so excited to see a teacher, not a celebrity or politician make the list and rank so high. Steve Spangler is a teacher, inventor and speaker. He is very talented and gets teachers, students and parents excited about science. Now that’s influential! Read more about him at Wikipedia and see he didn’t just do the Mentos trick, that’s just the most known – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Spangler
I heard Steve Spangler speak at a national science teachers convention last year in California. You’re right, he’s not a celebrity but he has an amazing following among teachers, especially elementary and middle school teachers. He tells people that the current education system is cheating kids out of a good science education. If the pre-k through 8th grade teachers don’t get kids excited about science, the chance of them taking a science class in high school goes down dramatically. I agree. Amazing – a teacher who speaks his mind and then tries to do something about the problem by helping to train his colleagues to be better science teachers. As influential goes, I’ll give him a vote.
I’m not surprised that Colbert made the list, given his surge in popularity, but #1 is amazing.
Also, Shiggy? According to this list, this must have been the best year of my life.
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