You can be assured that the Australian Prime Minister isn’t one of them !
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We stopped, they rethought. Meet the outstanding minds who are shaping the future
If the last 18 months haven’t got you thinking, then thinking probably isn’t your thing. We have witnessed microbes’ revenge on civilisation, seen the limits of the “politically possible” being reset and come to revere vaccinologists. We have learned how an economy can keep going after “business as usual” stops, and endured an enforced pause in which we could reconsider life’s priorities. Some of us were conscripted into teaching our children. Some may even have got round to reading the books they had always meant to. Many others didn’t, and got lost instead in armchair epidemiology.
There has been plenty to think about—but what sorts of thought are most important in a world emerging from a pandemic? In consultation with the experts who write for us, Prospect presents the world’s top 50 thinkers for this moment. In lively and occasionally heated discussions about who should make the grade, our criteria were not only originality and eminence within a field, but the singular pursuit of an identifiable idea and an ability to gain traction for it. We also insisted on some form of “intervention”—be it a book, speech or a public stand—over the past 12 months.
There is one paradoxical pattern in our 2021 list. In practical and even emotional terms, this is a collectivist moment. The events of the last year and a half have reminded humans anew of how connected their fates are and, from edicts about masks to furlough schemes and global minimum tax deals, the big state is back in public policy. But when we turn to the world of ideas, this is a year for people who are individualists by temperament, if not intellect.
Take technology. By my reckoning there are no fewer than nine tech experts on our list, perhaps not surprising if the test is “rebuilding the world.” But what’s striking is how many refuseniks are among them. Three walked away from Google: Timnit Gebru over a question of principle; John Martinis after deciding he didn’t quite fit; and Tristan Harris to pursue cyber-ethics outside—and in some senses against—the tech giant. Then there is Audrey Tang, a Taiwanese software developer and public health minister who is, literally, an anarchist in government; and Lina Khan, who upended a generation of thinking about competition policy before Joe Biden brought her in to tame Big Tech.
See the list here
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-worlds-top-50-thinkers-2021
