Important People

There are few actually important people to my life that I don’t know personally. The news is full of a bunch of celebrities and politicians who are, in general, pretty damned interchangeable. If any one of these were hit by a bus, my life would be relatively unchanged. Is this sort of an egocentric measure of a persons importance? Yes. I sat around trying to think of who it was I don’t know that are kind of irreplaceable.

Steve Irwin: This guy was a unique person, and it is he who started me down this line of reasoning. Conservation took a big hit when he died, and there will never be another Steve Irwin.

Ryan C Gordon: Without Ryan, a vast number of ports would not exist. Google Earth and a crap load of video games for instance. SDL would probably be bitrotting right now too.

Fred Rogers: Fred Rogers helped us gain fair use for the VCR and funding for PBS. I suppose at the time of his passing, he wasn’t contributing as much as he had previously, but as one of my personal heroes, he’s making the list.

I’m drawing a blank, if you can come up with some other unique people that affect our lives, please comment. I’ll try to update this post with new entries.