Via BBC News: Steve Jobs and Sir Tim Berners-Lee baffle the Brits. Excerpt:
Leading technology figures may have an image problem in the UK, according to a survey.
In a poll of 1000 British people, 20% had never heard of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and a further 10% thought he worked for a trade union.
Fifteen percent believed that web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee was either head of MI5 or an Arctic explorer.
Microsoft boss Bill Gates was the most well-known but 5% of the group thought he was a comedian or a famous thief.This ignorance of the people who most directly affect our lives has troubled me for a long time, because I share it. I must have used a mouse for a decade before I knew about its inventor, Douglas Englebart. Nor did I know much about the graphical user interface until I'd used one for several years.
The integrated circuit, which made modern computers possible, is unknown to the vast majority of its users. And who knows about Expensive Typewriter, the first word processor, which could run a Selectric typewriter for $100,000 in the early 1960s? That's a mere $712,000 in today's dollars.
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