The November 30 issue of Forbes is themed with profiling The World’s Most Powerful People. Very important stuff. Henry Kissinger contributed a list on the most powerful people in history, Karl Rove made a list of the most powerful people in Washington, Dr. Elias Zerhouni wrote his list of the most powerful people in medicine. Lots of good material here.

Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg.com, spent some time working on his list of the most powerful people in technology (p. 98). Interesting list. Here it is, in order of most to least powerful:

1. Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams (Twitter)
2. Jonathan Ive (Apple)
3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
4. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn)
5. Julius Genachowski (FCC)
6. Chris Anderson (TED Conference)
7. Leo Laporte (This Week In Tech)

Ever seen that SNL skit where the charters say “Really? Really??” a lot? They should do a parody of this list that goes something like this…

“Really? Jack Dorsey. Really. The galavanting chairman of Twitter. And his friend whose name is Biz that is in the tech biz? Really. And really, LinkedIn? Really? The powerful desert of a social networking wasteland. Really. Leo Laporte – really? He’s doing a podcast from his mom’s basement. Yeah, really. Chris Anderson? Really? He runs a conference where other people shine. Really? Really.”

Now, that’s done in humor, but this list is a little whack. I’m not even sure those are the most powerful tech people in the greater San Francisco area (let’s put Genachowski to the side, since he’s on everyones list right now), but let’s look at the bigger picture. All the most powerful people in tech work on web stuff? And are entrepreneurs basically? No one from MIT or Caltech, no one from an Italian or Japanese car company, nobody working on energy or clean technology – and nobody from outside the United States???

This could go on and on, but what’s the point? Maybe a couple of these people should indeed be on such a list, but I find the myopia of Silicon Valley and its extended entrepreneur, web, and venture capital community a little frightening. An overly inflated sense of self-worth combined with a seeming ignorance of anything you can’t acces from a smartphone results in some really wacky views of what technology is, and who is powerful in that sphere. And even if we are only talking about IT (which the magazine doesn’t designate), really? No one from IBM? Google? Microsoft?

I don’t really fault Kevin Rose for making a list, though it would be easy for Forbes to find 25 people who work in technology that are more qualified than he is. I do fault the thought process behind it though, and I fault even more that this list made it past Forbes’ editors,who should know better. Put up against the other lists in the issue, and the overall list, Rose’s list is almost comical in its naivity.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous