2013.11 谁是今天最伟大的发明家

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技术
明天的历史学家会认为谁是今天最伟大的发明家？
我们向技术、科学、医学和设计领域的主要人物征求提名。以下是他们的说法。

作者：Nicole Allan
2013年11月号
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埃隆-马斯克
PayPal、SpaceX和特斯拉汽车公司联合创始人


被提名人：雅虎高级副总裁亚当-卡汉 雅虎高级副总裁亚当-卡汉、甲骨文联合总裁马克-赫德、谷歌高级副总裁苏珊-沃基奇

本着达芬奇和本杰明-富兰克林等不折不扣的广泛修补者的精神，马斯克几乎改变了他所感兴趣的每一个领域，从电子支付到商业航天再到电动汽车。

像所有优秀的企业家一样，他从斯坦福大学的研究生课程中退学，创办了自己的第一家公司--一家在线地图和目录服务公司，该公司的销售使后来的贝宝公司得以成立--这也是马斯克通往大时代创新的门票。

与他的许多贝宝同事一样，马斯克利用出售该公司的财富来资助一系列新的企业，包括电动汽车制造商特斯拉和商业航天运营公司SpaceX。他在这两家公司位于帕洛阿尔托和洛杉矶的设施之间来回奔波，并一度诉诸于向朋友贷款以维持特斯拉的生存。

马斯克的雄心壮志的范围和规模引起了怀疑，但随着时间的推移，他已经证明自己不仅是一个思想家，而且是一个精明的商业思想家。赫德说："他是一个做大梦的人，""然后把它们变成现实"。


马斯克的最新梦想是Hyperloop，一个巨大的气动管道，可以在35分钟内将乘客从洛杉矶运送到旧金山。这听起来很疯狂，但正如Wojcicki所指出的，"埃隆-马斯克是少数能够提出Hyperloop并被认真对待的人之一"。


珍妮特-萨迪克-汗
纽约市交通局局长

被提名人：。Allison Arieff，设计作家

在她管理纽约市街道的六年时间里，以数据为导向的传奇人物萨迪克-坎已经切实地改变了这个城市的景观。由于新的开放空间（包括时代广场中央的广场）、数百英里的自行车道和全国最大的自行车共享系统，纽约现在是一个友好的、令人愉快的步行或骑自行车的地方--至少，比以前更多。萨迪克-汗还推动其他城市将交通基础设施作为经济发展的催化剂。


马库斯-佩尔森
Minecraft的创造者

被提名者。Paola Antonelli，现代艺术博物馆建筑和设计高级策展人

在一个设计精美的视频游戏的世界里，马库斯-佩尔森的《Minecraft》给人的感觉几乎是老派的。它的人物和环境是由类似乐高的积木构建的，玩家可以用它来建造任何他们喜欢的东西。对于安东内利来说，他今年夏天为MoMA正在萌芽的视频游戏收藏购买了这款游戏，这种可及性是革命性的。她说："这是第一次，人们可以在数字世界中制作东西，而不需要知道如何编程"。"教育的潜力是巨大的。"


文特-瑟夫
"互联网之父"

被提名人：。Mariette DiChristina，《科学美国人》杂志总编辑

20世纪70年代在美国国防部高级研究计划局工作时，瑟夫和他的计算机科学家伙伴鲍勃-卡恩创造了TCP/IP技术，使万维网成为可能，据迪克里斯蒂娜说，"为今天的即时通信和协作搭建了舞台"。


罗纳德-W-戴维斯
斯坦福大学生物化学家和遗传学家

被提名者。乔治-丘奇，哈佛大学医学院遗传学教授

在过去的20年里，相当多的重大遗传学进展都可以在某种程度上追溯到戴维斯。他是20世纪60年代第一批开始绘制和克隆DNA的科学家之一，他的生物技术方法已被证明对人类基因组计划和正在进行的基因定向医疗的追求具有关键意义。"他不只是一个一鸣惊人的人，"丘奇说。"他是一个经常提供颠覆性核心技术的人。"


杰夫-贝佐斯
亚马逊创始人兼首席执行官

被提名人：。Kara Swisher，AllThingsD.com联合执行编辑

贝索斯如何从西雅图的车库里卖书到经营世界上最大的在线零售商（见本期 "亚马逊之谜"）的故事被大量神话。他 "改变了零售业的经营方式，其规模之大，除了移动行业的史蒂夫-乔布斯之外，没有其他企业家为单一行业做过。"斯威舍尔说。现在，贝索斯正将更多的注意力转向他的副业--特别是他今年夏天收购的《华盛顿邮报》的重塑，他的遗产可能包括比零售业更多的内容。


迈克尔-墨菲
大众设计集团联合创始人兼首席执行官

被提名人。蒂姆-布朗，Ideo公司首席执行官

作为公共利益设计的领导者，墨菲创造了优雅、实用的空间，服务于通常不被咨询需求的社区。墨菲为大众设计的第一个项目是与全球健康先锋保罗-法默合作，在卢旺达建造了一个通风、阳光充足的公共医院，由当地工人用当地材料建造。就像大众的大多数医疗项目一样，它看起来太酷了，不像是一家医院。


杰克-丹格蒙德
环境系统研究所创始人

被提名人：。理查德-索尔-沃曼，TED会议创始人

1969年，当丹格蒙德用他一生的积蓄1100美元创立ESRI时，该公司为土地使用规划制作纸质地图。他无法预料到，到20世纪90年代，esri将成为地理信息系统软件这个新领域中无可争议的全球领导者。Wurman说："一切都发生在某个地方"。"杰克所产生的是我们如何理解我们的世界的基础"。


亚历克斯-卡普
帕兰提尔技术公司联合创始人兼首席执行官

被提名人。彼得-蒂尔，创始人基金的合伙人，贝宝的联合创始人

帕兰蒂尔与从中央情报局到疾病控制和预防中心等客户合作，组织和激活巨大的、难以处理的数据体，使分析人员能够跟踪可疑的恐怖分子和萌芽的流行病。卡普的秘密公司，有人认为它创造了国家安全局用来监视美国公民的软件，已经代表了无处不在的监控的威胁，但它也体现了大数据的承诺。泰尔说："技术意味着用更少的钱做更多的事，"他帮助创立了Palantir公司，并担任其董事会主席。"当涉及到国家安全时，这意味着在增加安全的同时减少对公民自由的侵犯。"

Nicole Allan是《大西洋》杂志的前高级编辑。




TECHNOLOGY
Who Will Tomorrow's Historians Consider Today's Greatest Inventors?
We asked leading figures in technology, science, medicine, and design for nominations. Here's what they said.

By Nicole Allan
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
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Elon Musk
Co-founder, PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors


NOMINATED BY: Adam Cahan, senior vice president, Yahoo; Mark Hurd, co-president, Oracle; Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president, Google

in the spirit of inveterate and wide-ranging tinkerers like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin, Musk has transformed virtually every field he’s taken an interest in, from electronic payments to commercial spaceflight to electric cars.

Raised in South Africa, Musk studied physics and business in the U.S. Like any good entrepreneur, he dropped out of a Stanford graduate program to launch his first company, an online mapping and directory service whose sale enabled the launch of what would become PayPal—and Musk’s ticket to big-time innovation.

Like many of his PayPal colleagues, Musk used his fortune from the sale of that company to fund a flurry of new ventures, including Tesla, a manufacturer of electric cars, and SpaceX, a commercial spaceflight operation. He splits his time between the companies’ facilities in Palo Alto and Los Angeles, and at one point resorted to taking loans from friends to keep Tesla alive.

The range and scale of Musk’s ambitions have attracted skepticism, but over time, he has proved himself to be not only an ideas man but an astute business thinker. “He’s a guy who dreams big dreams,” says Hurd, “and then makes them happen.”


Musk’s latest dream is the Hyperloop, a giant pneumatic tube that would transport passengers from L.A. to San Francisco in 35 minutes. It sounds crazy, but as Wojcicki points out, “Elon Musk is one of the few people who can propose the Hyperloop and be taken seriously.”


Janette Sadik-Khan
Commissioner, New York City Department of Transportation

NOMINATED BY: Allison Arieff, design writer

in her six years running New York City’s streets, the legendarily data-driven Sadik-Khan has tangibly changed the city’s landscape. Thanks to new open spaces (including a plaza in the middle of Times Square), hundreds of miles of bike lanes, and the nation’s largest bike-share system, New York is now a friendly, pleasant place to navigate on foot or by bicycle—at least, more so than it used to be. Sadik-Khan has also pushed other cities to use transportation infrastructure as a catalyst for economic development.


Markus Persson
Creator, Minecraft

NOMINATED BY: Paola Antonelli, senior curator for architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art

in a world of lushly designed video games, Markus Persson’s Minecraft feels almost old-school. Its characters and settings are constructed from Lego-like blocks that players use to build whatever they like. For Antonelli, who acquired the game this summer for MoMA’s budding video-game collection, this accessibility is revolutionary. “For the first time, people can make things in the digital world without knowing how to program,” she says. “The educational potential is huge.”


Vint Cerf
"Father of the Internet"

NOMINATED BY: Mariette DiChristina, editor in chief, Scientific American

while at the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1970s, Cerf and his fellow computer scientist Bob Kahn created the TCP/IP technology that enabled the World Wide Web—“setting the stage,” according to DiChristina, “for today’s instant communication and collaboration.”


Ronald W. Davis
Biochemist and geneticist, Stanford

NOMINATED BY: George Church, professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School

a substantial number of the major genetic advances of the past 20 years can be traced back to Davis in some way. He was one of the first scientists to begin mapping and cloning DNA, in the 1960s, and his biotech methods have proved pivotal to the Human Genome Project and the ongoing pursuit of genetically targeted medical treatments. “He’s not just a one-hit wonder,” says Church. “He’s a frequent provider of disruptive core technologies.”


Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon

NOMINATED BY: Kara Swisher, co–executive editor, AllThingsD.com

the story of how Bezos went from selling books out of his Seattle garage to running the world’s biggest online retailer (see “The Amazon Mystery” in this issue) is much mythologized. He “has changed the way retail is done on a scale that no other entrepreneur, save Steve Jobs in mobile, has done for a single industry,” says Swisher. Now that Bezos is turning more attention to his side projects—specifically, a promised reinvention of The Washington Post, which he purchased this summer—his legacy may encompass much more than retail.


Michael Murphy
Co-Founder and CEO, mass Design Group

NOMINATED BY: Tim Brown, CEO, Ideo

a leader in public-interest design, Murphy creates elegant, functional spaces that serve communities not usually consulted about their needs. Murphy’s first project for mass, in collaboration with the global health pioneer Paul Farmer, was an airy, sunlit public hospital in Rwanda, constructed by local laborers from local materials. Like most of mass’s medical projects, it looks way too cool to be a hospital.


Jack Dangermond
Founder, Environmental Systems Research Institute

NOMINATED BY: Richard Saul Wurman, founder, ted Conference

when dangermond spent his life savings of $1,100 to found esri in 1969, the company created paper maps for land-use planning. He could not have predicted that by the 1990s, esri would become the undisputed global leader in the new field of geographic-information-systems software. “Everything takes place someplace,” says Wurman. “What Jack produces is the underpinning of how we understand our world.”


Alex Karp
Co-Founder and CEO, Palantir Technologies

NOMINATED BY: Peter Thiel, partner, Founders Fund, and co-founder, PayPal

palantir works with clients ranging from the CIA to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to organize and animate huge, unwieldy bodies of data, allowing analysts to track suspected terrorists and budding epidemics alike. Karp’s secretive company, which some believe created the software that the National Security Agency uses to spy on American citizens, has come to represent the threat of ubiquitous surveillance—but it also embodies the promise of Big Data. “Technology means doing more with less,” says Thiel, who helped found Palantir and serves as the chairman of its board. “When it comes to national security, this means increasing safety while reducing violations of civil liberties.”

Nicole Allan is a former senior editor at The Atlantic.