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April 28, 2008
Who Are These People?
And why are they on this list?
I've been tagged by John Hobbins to play a little game with The Top 100 Public Intellectuals as published by Foreign Policy. I view this as a snobbish game but then I'm a kind of a snob about certain things.
It does seem that John has too much time on his hands. Otherwise, his list of public intellectuals he could carry on a conversation with based on things he has read by them wouldn't have been so long. Mine is much shorter.
Al Gore, Alexander de Waal, Ann Applebaum, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Dennett, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Jürgen Habermas, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Peter Singer, Pope Benedict XVI, Richard Dawkins, Salman Rushdee, Sari Nusseibeh, Steven Pinker, Umberto Eco
Yes, I have heard of a some of the others and have even read a few of their works but, to my shame (and relief), I can't remember anything that they said.
Regarding those I have spoken with in person or corresponded with: Because John didn't specify the extent of that contact my list is slightly longer than his.
Al Gore, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker
I do doubt any of them would remember these encounters. I met and chatted very briefly with Al Core at a telecommunications conference when we were both Vice Presidents. He was Vice President of the United States and I was Vice President of Advanced Product Marketing working on the fringes of the telecommunications industry. It was more than a handshake but only a little more. He actually appeared very interested in the issues of common air interface for wireless communications that we were discussing at our table and was knowledgeable enough to ask a fairly technical question or two. I was seated at a front row table and he made the rounds. How I came to be seated at a front row table is another story and not a particularly flattering one. After dinner, Gore spoke on his views of the future telecommunications: good speech, well received by the techies in the audience but he didn't invent the internet, at least not that night. Since then Gore (or his staff) and I have exchanged emails a couple of times on various subjects. These email exchanges do not include the spam that Gore and many politicians send out on a fairly regular basis. The other four "public intellectuals" I spoke with briefly at various presentations they gave. I also had a follow up exchange with Diamond.
Regarding those "authors any self-respecting intellectual must read if she hasn’t already:" In this day of specialization even among intellectuals, it is really hard to say whom I would choose. But I think Jared Diamond and Noam Chomsky paint with the broadest brush.
While the list is dynamic in that a poll is underway, there were too significant disappointments in the list when I prepared this post. First, it had an overabundance of intellectuals who focus on politics. But, considering the source that isn't too suppressing. Second, the list lacked any physicists, cosmologists, or mathematicians. I believe that anyone who would aspire to the company of those on any list of 100 intellectuals should be familiar with the work of Neil deGrasse Tyson (and not just his popular works although I admit they make up most of his work these days) and John Allen Paulos. Real intellectuals may well think of better choices to represent cosmology and mathematics. But, not being a real intellectual, I can't.
Since no one has ticked me off enough lately to earn being tagged with this game, I will pass on the opportunity.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 28, 2008 7:57 AM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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