He's on the list now, so now my comment looks like I'm questioning why he's there. I am not. He wasn't there when I first posted that (or, I've lost my mind)
I want to vote for Elon Musk too, but Edward Snowden is too important. Also, why are there no women listed? Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer made lots of news this year.
It's not inexplicable including Narendra Modi, he just put all the names down that were in the original thread. The original thread didn't specify tech as being important.
Adding additional names because somebody else asked for it is hardly a major issue, it's just the nature of HN polls - there's no time to do a nomination phase then voting because if you don't act straight away, you're not going to get on the front page and nobody will vote.
(Although this seems to have been flagged off anyway...)
I think putting Snowden on here is cheating, especially among this crowd. Yes, what he did was extremely important. Yes what he did had a tech impact, but the majority of the impact was societal, IMHO. I voted for him on Time, but here I have to vote for Musk.
Sheryl Sandberg wrote a very influential book about (her perspective on) being a woman in today's workplace called Lean In.
She's often described as the emotional heart of Facebook and is one of the few truly powerful women in tech and the only one currently directly engaging in the debate on the issues associated with that.
Edward Snowden is much less about "tech" and a lot more about privacy revolving mobile phones, internet and a lot more, like banking information, centralised processing of CCTV camera footage, etc, etc.
I'm sure many of Yahoo's employees and investors appreciate Mayer's efforts, but I don't think she really had a big impact on anyone else.
I have to admit that I don't know much about Sandberg, but her Wikipedia page doesn't really show anything worthy of a "person of the year award." Perhaps you can enlighten me?
How about Malala Yousafzai? She's amazing. Not really a tech person, but advocating for education is one of the best ways to nurture technological innovation.
Second that. He may be a good or bad politician depending on the person's viewpoint, but there is almost nothing he has done for technology.
The closest he comes to tech that is covered on HN is to have covered a lot of area in his home state with solar projects.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who isn't happy with the other choices (like why include Sheryl Sandberg but not Mark Zuckerberg, and Narendra Modi), but I wanted to vote for Edward Snowden anyway.
Would love to know who at HN had the epiphany that their Person of the Year in Tech list left out Marissa Mayer & Sheryl Sandberg. As of 9:38am today it was 100% male; checked back at 10:05 and there they are, tacked on at the end.
First Past the Post poll? Really? We're supposed to be smart nerds; with more than two candidates we should be using a preferential voting system, not FPTP. Even the Academy Awards and the Heisman trophy are selected with preferential voting systems. We're letting ourselves be outsmarted by football players? Someone make a Schulze Method poll already.
Edit: okay, it looks like it's Approval Voting; I didn't realize you could vote for multiple. That's a lot better but still not as good as the football players!
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By the time you added the most recent names to the poll (22 minutes after creating it) at least one name already had 100+ votes.
You've also inexplicably put Narendra Modi on there (misspelled) even though he's not in tech.
Adding additional names because somebody else asked for it is hardly a major issue, it's just the nature of HN polls - there's no time to do a nomination phase then voting because if you don't act straight away, you're not going to get on the front page and nobody will vote.
(Although this seems to have been flagged off anyway...)
One is a corporate hack who had a book ghost-written, the other is a corporate hack who once dated Larry Page and landed a nice 5 year gig at Yahoo.
They have done nothing for technology. Nothing. They should not be included just because they're in the filter bubble of internet gossip.
If you want to vote for someone, on merit, who happens to be female, try Limor Fried of Adafruit.
And Snowden's technical ability was instrumental to what he did. So I think he fits quite nicely into the category.
She's often described as the emotional heart of Facebook and is one of the few truly powerful women in tech and the only one currently directly engaging in the debate on the issues associated with that.
You can watch her truly inspiring talk on TED to get an idea of what it's all about: http://www.ted.com/talks/sheryl_sandberg_why_we_have_too_few...
That's an interesting role I've never heard of before. Is there an equivalent at Apple and Google?
I have to admit that I don't know much about Sandberg, but her Wikipedia page doesn't really show anything worthy of a "person of the year award." Perhaps you can enlighten me?
How about Malala Yousafzai? She's amazing. Not really a tech person, but advocating for education is one of the best ways to nurture technological innovation.
Edit: okay, it looks like it's Approval Voting; I didn't realize you could vote for multiple. That's a lot better but still not as good as the football players!