Tim Berners-Lee
Arguably less of a household name than the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, if it were not for Tim Berners-Lee very few of the major technological advancements we have seen on a consumer level over the past two decades or so would have been accomplishable. That is because Tim Berners-Lee is the creator of the World Wide Web.
Berners-Lee created the Internet after writing a proposal for his former employer CERN that would have enabled greater communication within the company. After realizing this proposal could be implemented on a global scale, Berners-Lee and computer scientist Robert Cailliau came up with the idea that hypertext could be implemented in order to link out to further information and pages, with this leading to the creation of the very first website in 1990, along with the first web browser and web server. With that, the World Wide Web was born.
Through these primitive beginnings came the introduction of the Mosaic Web Browser in 1993, which linked graphics with text and led to the World Wide Web becoming the most popular Internet protocol among users, with Berners-Lee creating the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994 that saw web standards being more strictly guided, including the enforced usage of domain names and HTML.
We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges.
But despite Berners-Lee being the creator of arguably the most important invention in modern history, his net worth pales in comparison with the likes of Bill Gates’. This is because Berners-Lee didn’t put a patent on the web, ensuring that it could be freely used and developed upon by everyone, and enabling it to grow without being encumbered by restrictions. It was this decision that has led to the creation of the likes of Google, smartphones and tablets, and if the patent had been sold we’d likely all still be using AOL. It doesn’t bare thinking about.
Berners-Lee is an underappreciated hero of our time. He’s a man who played a huge role in the development of the information age, but who overlooked the financial rewards his invention could have afforded him in favor of ensuring its progression and development under the guidance of others. He’s not a face that’s as easily recognizable as Zuckerberg or Jobs, but his impact upon the world we live in today has been arguably more important.
Shigeru Miyamoto
Nintendo may not be enjoying their most stellar run of form right now with the Wii U struggling to gain ground against the likes of Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, but the video game industry owes an inordinate amount of debt to them and the legendary video game designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto in particular.
It’s odd to think that at one point Nintendo essentially was the gaming industry, with it having total dominance of the market back in the early ‘80s following the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES as it is more commonly known. The company didn’t rule the gaming industry with an iron first, though – many competitors have come and gone since Nintendo first ruled the roost, with the company always preferring to make games on its own terms rather than follow the pack, not concerning itself with third-party developers outside of a handle of their loyal partners, and to continue to innovate with their hardware.
Miyamoto is credited with saving the gaming industry following the video game crash of 1983, with a saturation of the market leading to the second generation of gaming consoles in the US being brought to an end after the industry endured a $3 billion drop in revenue. Miyamoto’s Super Mario Bros. for the NES released in 1985, leading to a storm in sales of the NES and dragging the entire industry out of the hole it had dug itself.
Miyamoto would go on to design a number of Nintendo’s most enduring and beloved series, including The Legend of Zelda, producing bonafide system sellers that carried the company through generation after generation. For the NES’ successor the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Miyamoto co-directed Super Mario World alongside Takashi Tezuka, a game which was bundled in with the new console and, like Super Mario Bros. for it, propelled sales of the system. With the Nintendo 64, Miyamoto successfully made the jump to 3D gaming with Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the latter of which is still regarded as arguably the greatest video game of all time.
I think that inside every adult is the heart of a child. We just gradually convince ourselves that we have to act more like adults.
Though the Nintendo 64’s successor the GameCube failed to drive in sales as much as the consoles that had come before it, what Miyamoto and Nintendo did next was truly revolutionary. The Wii was the first ever motion-controlled console, and the general reception following its announcement was mixed to say the least. A huge risk on behalf of Nintendo, replacing standard video game controllers with Wiimotes, a motion-sensor wand that essentially allowed players to use their arms in order to reenact their movements in-game, was perceived by many as a foolish endeavour from a company that needed to mount a comeback following poor sales of its previous console. Fortunately, those naysayers were proven wrong.
With Miyamoto having played a big role in the console’s development process, the Wii managed to capture the attention of a market that its rival had failed to court, with the console inveigling people who were otherwise uninterested in video games due to its accessibility. Demonstrations of the console were set up in retailers where they attracted crowds of people eager to try out Wii Sports, the system’s pack-in launch title, and it swiftly reached the top of both kids’ and adults’ Christmas lists. It was an unequivocal success, managing to appeal to the “casual” market along with the more dedicated gamers, and pretty soon the console was practically omnipresent, with seemingly everyone having one in their home regardless of whether or not they knew their Counter-Strike from their Call of Duty.
Shigeru Miyamoto played a huge role in making the video game industry what it is today, bringing it from out of dredges in the early ‘80s and continuing to make games that maintained Nintendo’s relevancy in the video game market for over three decades. Without him it’s unlikely that Nintendo would still be around today, or that the likes of Sony and Microsoft would have ever entered the console market. He paved the way for generation upon generation of developer, and his innovations in the field have led to the creation of some of the very best video games ever.
Bill Gates
Surely the most recognizable name in tech, Bill Gates needs very little introduction, such has been his extraordinary impact upon the tech industry.
Founding the first real software in company in the form of Microsoft in 1975, which was then solely used to develop BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 microcomputer, Gates and Microsoft shot to prominence when they entered the personal computing space, eventually heading what would later be known as the personal computing revolution.
Striking a partnership with IBM, Microsoft were signed up to create MS-DOS, the company’s second operating system following Xenix, in 1981. However, it was in 1985 that the company started to step on their own two feet with the release of the first ever Microsoft Windows OS, with it boasting primitive tools such as an early version of Paint, along with a word processor, a calendar and a control panel, among other things.
While the likes of Steve Jobs were seen as visionaries in terms of design, Gates was much more of an engineer, applying his trade by writing each line of code for each of Microsoft’s early operating systems. In 1995 came the release of Windows 95, a huge stepping stone for both Gates and Microsoft which saw the OS becoming infinitely more popular and more user-friendly, marking the addition of a Start button and a taskbar, with it representing a leap forward for personal computing technology due to its ease-of-use and stability.
Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.
Over the course of the next few years Microsoft would unveil the likes of Windows XP, which remains the most popular operating system in the world to this day, XP x64 and Vista, with the company then stepping foot into the home console space with the Xbox, all while under the leadership of Gates.
Gates’ unparalleled success in the home computing market has led to him becoming one of the world’s wealthiest people, with his current net worth valued by Forbes at $79.2 billion. After relegating himself to the position of a board member at Microsoft and passing over management duties, Gates has spent the latter portion of his career engaging in philanthropic charity work as part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with him recently playing a key role in the development of a system that turns human waste into clear drinking water.
Without Bill Gates the accessibility we all enjoy in modern software would be non-existent, with his vision for an operating system that could be easily navigated by everyone leading to the boom in home computing that we continue to enjoy the benefits of to this day.
Photos: Getty Images
