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Related: About this forumWho’s More Famous Than Jesus?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/whos-more-famous-than-jesus.html?_r=0An interactive catalog of fame, from Abraham to Zinedine Zidane.
By DWIGHT GARNERMARCH 14, 2014
A network of fame according to Pantheon, a new project from M.I.T.'s Media Lab.
There are many varieties of fame. Jesus Christ was the first person to achieve it globally, Clive James wrote, without conquering the world by violence. The best kind for a poet to earn, W. H. Auden said, is like some valley cheese local, but prized elsewhere. Yet if all fame, like all politics, is to some degree local, how thoroughly it has been transmitted across the planet and through the centuries has been difficult, if not impossible, to quantify.
Pantheon, a new project from the Macro Connections group in M.I.T.s Media Lab, is giving that a stab. It has collected and analyzed data on cultural production from 4,000 B.C. to 2010. With a few clicks on its website, which just went live, you can swing through time and geography, making plain the output of, say, Brazil (largely soccer players) or Belarus (politicians). It also ranks professions from chemists to jurists to porn stars (No. 1 is Jenna Jameson; No. 2 is the Czech Republics Silvia Saint).
For now, you are legitimately famous, the M.I.T. team has decided, if a Wikipedia page under your name exists in more than 25 languages. We have taken a smattering of the most famous, according to Pantheon data and classifications, and wandered down rabbit holes of fame. There are many ghosts in the machine spirits that César Hidalgo, the projects director, likes to tend. (The ranking system takes longevity into account, which helps explain why many of its most famous people have been dead for at least 1,500 years.) Poetically, we can say that Isaac Newtons ghost understood as information lives reincarnated in the hard drives that populate server farms, he says. And these ghosts gather to make a point. Even in an era of Kardashians, actually making things matters. Tangible achievements, Hidalgo says, whether these are songs, books, works of art or scientific discoveries, are better tickets to long-term immortality than the accumulation of material wealth.
Most Famous People of the Last 6,000 Years
1. Aristotle
2. Plato
3. Jesus Christ
4. Socrates
5. Alexander the Great
6. Leonardo Da Vinci
7. Confucius
8. Julius Caesar
9. Homer
10. Pythagoras
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Who’s More Famous Than Jesus? (Original Post)
cbayer
Mar 2014
OP
tridim
(45,358 posts)1. Aristotle, Plato, Jesus Christ, Socrates?
Morons.
Downwinder
(12,869 posts)2. Which Socrates?
Where is Mary?
The_Commonist
(2,518 posts)3. Why, The Beatles, of course!
cbayer
(146,218 posts)4. Ha! John may have been correct at the time, but the Beatles will eventually fade
or just become a piece of nostalgia.
Sorry, John.
WovenGems
(776 posts)5. As will Jesus
Time will erase all that is current. If you don't believe me ask Zeus.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)6. You may be right, but 2000 years is a pretty good track record.
rug
(82,333 posts)7. Miley Cyrus is better known than Aristotle.
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)8. This is outrageous!
Sir Isaac Newton should be number 1!!!
The greatest genius of all time....ALL TIME!!!