THE YOUNG AND INFLUENTIAL

With age comes wisdom, but not necessarily success. Let’s look at some of the most influential people in this country under 40.

Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 28
Founder and CEO of Facebook
INTERNET
In less than a decade, Zuckerberg has taken the social network he started in a Harvard dorm to a ubiquitous part of life.
1 billion
Global Facebook users; that’s 1 in 7 people on Earth

Sergey Brin
Age: 39 (turns 40 in August 2013)
Co-founder, Google
INTERNET
Co-founder of a search engine originally called BackRub, half of Google’s leadership team recently turned his attention to the company’s ne pet project, Google Glass, an augmented reality device that users wear on their faces. Brin is worth about $22 billion just over a decade removed from working out of a garage.
Nearly 1 in 2
Internet users who visit Google daily

Marissa Mayer
Age: 37
President and CEO, Yahoo
INTERNET
The 20th Google employee (and its first female engineer) became CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012. Whether the board’s latest move (the company had four CEOs in five years) is paying off remains to be seen, but the company’s stock is steadily rising
June 2012 15.83
July 2012 15.84
August 2012 14.65
September 2012 15.98
October 2012 16.84
November 2012 18.77
December 2012 19.90
January 2013 19.63
February 2013 21.31
March 2013 23.53
April 2013 24.20

Frank Ocean
Age: 25
Singer-songwriter
Ocean started his career in music writing songs for Justin Bieber, Brandy, John Legend and Beyonce. He makes music for himself now, and also makes history, last year revealing attraction to men. He recently was voted the most influential gay man in music in response.

Ben Silbermann
Age: 30
Co-founder and CEO, Pinterest
INTERNET
A site launched in 2010 has grown slowly at first then all at once, exploding from a few thousand users at first to 48 million. That’s nearly 700,000 new users every month.

Jared Polis
Age: 37
U.S. representative, Colorado 2nd District
POLITICS
The Democrat from Boulder was the first openly gay freshman congressman when he took the oath of office in 2009. With public opinion rapidly shifting and many of his fellow members of Congress “evolving” on the issue of marriage equality, Polis is in the center, opposing the Defense of Marriage Act and supporting other measures to extend protections and rights to gays and lesbians.

Perry Chen
Age: 36
Co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter
Charles Adler
Age: 38
Co-founder of Kickstarter
Yancey Strickler
Age: 33
Co-founder of Kickstarter
Kickstarter’s trio of founders are responsible for forming the world’s largest fundraising platform. The success of crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter has even had an impact on government, with recent changes in law expanding the power of crowdfunding.
Pebble $10 million+
Ouya $8.5 million
The Veronica Mars movie project $5.1 million
Amanda Palmer album and tour $1.2 million

Brendan Steinhauser
Age: 31
Author, Tea Party organizer
POLITICS
A Texas native, Steinhauser has been a driving force in tea party candidates’ rise to power all over the country. He trains potential volunteers and candidates in social networking, voter outreach and grassroots organizing, a few hallmarks of tea party candidates.
About 1 in 3
Tea party-backed candidates elected in 2010, considered a watershed moment for the movement

Kevin Systrom
Age: 28
Co-founder and CEO, Instagram
INTERNET
More than just a place for people to post pictures of their food, Instagram rapidly became the primary photo sharing service among smartphone users, surging to more than 100 million users just three years after it was founded and being snapped up by Facebook for a cool $1 billion.
40 million
Photos posted or shared per day

Lena Dunham
Age: 26
TELEVISION
A divisive figure among TV critics and fans alike, Dunham burst onto the scene in 2012 with her HBO series “Girls.” For her work on “Girls,” Dunham won two Golden Globe awards in 2013 and was named Time Magazine’s Coolest Person of the Year.

Jeff George
Age: 39
Global head of Sandoz
MEDICAL
Leading Sandoz, a subsidiary of generics giant Novartis, since 2007, George has helped steer the company into annual sales of $9.5 billion and emergence in generic biologic drugs. It’s estimated Sandoz has 50% market share of generic biologics.

Jimmy Fallon
Age: 39
Comedian, Late-night host, actor
TELEVISION
A “Saturday Night Live” alumnus and heartthrob, Fallon has been hosted his own late-night NBC show since 2009, and in 2014, he will take the biggest chair in late night, becoming the host of the “The Tonight Show” when Jay Leno steps down.

Lady Gaga
Age: 27
Singer, musician
MUSIC
Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, Lady Gaga’s 2008 single “Just Dance” helped announce her presence to the music work, garnering critical and commercial acclaim and earning her a Grammy Award nomination. Her fame and influence have grown since then: She boasts more than 30 million followers on Twitter, is an activist for LGBT causes and was named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.

SOURCES
CNET
Biography.com
Time Magazine
The Huffington Post
policymic.com
Yahoo!
Google
Facebook
Forbes.com
internetworldstats.com

Algorithm #1: Operating Systems

Operating systems would not exist without the use of algorithms.

OS: the glue between digital bytes and the user
without it, we’d all still be using typewriters
OS’s take many forms depending on their intended use
Most researchers agree:
Origins of the OS lie in our earliest history: not the last few decades
Original OS Examples
Babylonian Abacus
Incan Khipu
(both intended to keep precise records of complex data)
Modern computers didn’t appear until mid 20th century
1970’s and 80’s:
they became more widely used in academia
able to talk to one another
microprocessor tech evolved enough for creation of powerful desktop computers
1980’s and 90’s:
the familiar user-friendly OS emerged
Microsoft and Apple drove the evolution of the desktop GUI OS
their battle has given us a wide variety of OS’s

Algorithm #2: Communications

Without algorithms, there would be no World Wide Web

Two of the most famous, world changing algorithms:
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
Defines how the Internet transmits data
Invented when computers were mainframes housed in cool rooms (and dinosaurs roamed the earth)
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer (or Transport) Protocol
underlies the WWW and played a large part in the Internet’s mid-90s breakthrough
1969: ARPANET was developed
a four-node, packet-switched network
1974: TCP/IP was developed
proposed as the new set of protocols
“The most basic bit of ‘science’ in current networks is the discovery that packet switching actually works,” MIT’s Clark told the E-Commerce Times.

Many thought TCP/IP would not work: they thought it would be unstable.
1980: ARPA began converting its computers to TCP/IP
1983: ARPA mandated that all computers connected to ARPNET, use TCP/IP
TCP/IP became the standard underpinning today’s Internet – used by hundreds of millions worldwide
there are nearly 150,000,000 active Web sites on the Internet today

Algorithm #3: Google

Google’s search engine which defines the way in which millions of people find information online

What does it do?
Searches the Web using for keywords used to search
Assigns a page rank to each page based on several factors
ie. How many times keywords appear on the page
Higher ranked pages appear further up in Google’s search engine results page (SERP)
Being listed prominently on Google can result in a big boost in site traffic and visibility
How does it work?
Automated programs called spiders or crawlers travel the Web
Spiders move from link to link building up an index page for keywords
Google references the index when a user enters a search query
Humble beginnings
1998: 10,000 Google searches/day
1999: 500,000 Google searches/day
Google no longer shares those numbers
estimates 3B daily searches
1998: First Google index had 26m Web pages
2011: Over 1trillion
Google may have a googol worth of pages in just a few years
1998: Bill Gates told Auletta his greatest fear was of a few guys in a garage starting a behemoth that would challenge his company.
That’s precisely how Google started
Google revolutionized the media world
It stores 24 quadrillion data bits
Plans to digitize 20 million books

Algorithm #4: GPS (Global Positioning System)

Sat navs are a fascinating offshoot of both the US military’s desire to equip its units with the facility to find out their position and the ability to display maps on a computer screen.

2 major algorithms for sat-navs.
the ability of the unit to use the GPS satellites to work out where the unit is situated
the ability of the sat-nav to determine the shortest distance from point A to point B
Other algorithms in play, mostly dealing with the visual display of the route to take, but these two algorithms are the most important.
GPS started out as a US Air Force system to help determine the position of any receiver to an accuracy of 15 metres.
Regan promised to make GPS available for civilian use following the downing of the civilian KAL 007 airliner
the airliner had drifted into Soviet restricted airspace
1993 – the unencrypted civilian signal was downgraded for accuracy of about 100 meters.
2000 – accuracy limitation was removed
Positioning algorithm:
30 satellites, in Earth’s orbit, transmit the same information
Three main pieces of data:
exact time of transmital
precise orbital data (the ephemeris)
overall system health
The GPS unit listens for, and interprets, these messages
The GPS unit uses time and the speed of light to calculate location
GPS units have become prevalent throughout our society
cars
cellphones
laptops
hand-held GPS devices

Algorithm #5: DoD Level Encryption Codes

Sometimes, algorithms that change the world arise not as research for its own sake, but to answer a pressing need. One example is encryption.

Encryption was created to defend against code-breakers
Code-breakers seek to steal or eavesdrop on vital data
1960’s – standards-based multi-vendor networks were created
1977 – encryption algorithm, RSA, evolved to safeguard code
RSA – named after inventors Rivest, Shamir and Adleman
RSA and it’s descendants play a critical role in today’s Internet-heavy environment
Cryptography
CIS (Cryptographic Interoperability Strategy)
developed to increase assured rapid sharing within the US and between allies
Common public standards, protocols, algorithms and modes are used
These are known as the “Secure Sharing Suite”or S.3.
Implementation of CIS facilitates the development of broader secure cryptographic products
Provides war fighters on the battlefield, ability to share time-sensitive info securely
Enables the gov’t to share intelligence info securely with State and local First Responders
NSA Suite A Cryptography: Unpublished algorithm
Suite A contains both classified and unclassified algorithms
Used in applications where Suite B may not be appropriate
NSA Suite B Cryptography: Published algorithm
Includes cryptographic algorithms for:
key exchange
digital signatures
hashing
encryption
These algorithms play a huge role in keeping our country secure

In Closing

Algorithms have the power to change the course of history
They can be found everywhere you look
Linking structure on the Web
Inner workings of automobiles
Intricacies of stock market exchanges
Whatever the purpose, algorithms will continue to shake up the status quo
The key is to recognize which algorithms will drive the directions of tomorrow’s business world

Sources:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/algorithm
http://www-chucol.mml.cam.ac.uk/?page_id=52
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/33488.html
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/04/google-tenth-anniversary-tech-enterprise-cx_wt_0905google.html
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100120/COLUMNIST/1201021?p=3&tc=pg
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/car-tech/satnav/how-your-sat-nav-works-out-the-best-route-677682
http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=1733
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/33488.html

Some of today’s most inspirational leaders come from the worlds of business and politics. Some of them are even entertainers first and leaders second. In any case, these folks are the ones that everyone else looks up to, and they’re the ones leading us bravely into the future.

It’s one thing to be a leader; it’s another thing entirely to be an inspirational one. Plenty of people lead others, but fewer manage to inspire them too. For the sake of this list, we’re strictly focusing on leaders who inspire the world at large and not necessarily just those who follow them. In other words, these people are leaving indelible marks on society, and they are sure to be remembered for centuries to come.

Barack Obama

The current president is the American dream writ large. He not only rose from being raised by a single mother to becoming the leader of the free world, but he managed to do so as a minority. As the first African-American U.S. president, Obama instantly inspired millions of people around the world. On the night he was elected, people around the globe celebrated, and the famous scene from Grant Park in Chicago was played out in several locations across the world. Since becoming the 44th president, Obama has ended one war and is working to end another, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to boot. Whether you agree with his politics or not, there’s no denying how inspirational he is.

Bill Gates

When people think of millionaires and billionaires, images of Ebenezer Scrooge often spring to mind. Bill Gates has smashed those perceptions by being one of the most generous billionaires in history. As the founder of Microsoft, Gates could have taken a miserly approach to his great fortune. Instead, he’s always been steadfastly committed to giving back. He and his wife run the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which works on improving education in the U.S., fighting infectious diseases and improving the food supply around the world. Gates has heralded in an era of kinder, gentler, more giving capitalism.

Sir Richard Branson

As the founder and chairman of the Virgin Group, which is made up of more than 400 companies, Branson is a force to be reckoned with in the business world. Instead of using that power to push along his own agenda, he’s been using to advance science. A few years ago, Branson founded Virgin Galactic, which is going to give civilians the chance to travel in spaceships and see outer space. Bookings are currently being accepted, and trips are scheduled to begin toward the end of this year. With NASA’s space program out of commission, Branson is a beacon of light for anyone who loves space.

Oprah Winfrey

Though her long-running show is now over, Winfrey still manages to make waves. Unlike many celebrities, her waves tend to be of the humanitarian variety. Although she clearly isn’t out to achieve world peace or to prompt sweeping reforms, Winfrey has long been the champion of those who are down on their luck. She comes from very humble beginnings and uses her story as proof that people can achieve their goals. As a black woman, she’s a clear inspiration to African Americans and women, but her influence truly extends across all genders, races and ages.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

No list of today’s most inspirational leaders would be complete without a mention of the founders of Google. This dynamic duo truly changed the world with their revolutionary search engine, and they’ve never rested on their laurels. With every passing year, Google embarks on some kind of new technology or exciting innovation. It’s gotten to the point that it’s impossible to talk about the Internet or technology without discussing Google too.

Jeff Bezos

If a lot of people from the technology field have made the list, it’s because technology plays such a prominent role in modern life. As the founder of Amazon, Bezos has not only changed the way in which people shop for things – he’s changed the way they enjoy books entirely too. With the debut of the Kindle, Bezos truly cemented his place in the historical record. The Kindle Fire has even reduced some of the iPad’s luster, which is no easy feat. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t use Amazon at least every now and then, and that’s pretty inspirational.

Mohammed Nasheed

Unless you’re from the Maldives or follow environmental issues closely, you may not have heard of Nasheed. He served as president of that country from 2008 to 2012, and he pulled that off after being imprisoned dozens of times for various political reasons. During his tenure, he sought to make his tiny country completely carbon neutral. While working toward that goal, he inspired leaders around the world. Since then, the concept of carbon neutrality is being taken more seriously than ever, and there’s little doubt that Nasheed’s influence played a huge part in that.

Sonia Sotomayor

For many years, white males from wealthy families were the only ones who could hope to ascend to the Supreme Court. The highest court in the land has become a lot more diverse, fortunately, and Sotomayor is one of its most interesting and exciting success stories. She grew up poor in the Bronx and was raised by her widowed mother. Based on her early life alone, no one would ever predict that she’d eventually become a Supreme Court justice. As if that’s not inspiring enough, she’s the first Hispanic to earn a place on the court, so she’s smashed away that barrier too.

Bill Clinton

Former U.S. presidents usually spend their waning years doing philanthropic things and wielding their power to make the world a better place. Bill Clinton has gone above and beyond the call of duty. In fact, he still has so much respect around the world that he’s been called on to help out when crises occur. There’s little doubt that his influence played a huge role in Barack Obama’s reelection, and he and his wife continue to be extremely influential around the world. If you’re not convinced that he’s inspirational, just watch him speak sometime.

Warren Buffet

The list is rounded out by yet another wealthy businessman. Buffet was used his power for the forces of good, however, and many believe his influence helped to keep the recent financial crisis from being a complete and total disaster. Buffet helped out a handful of major corporations that were struggling during the crisis, and he played a big part in keeping investor confidence from plummeting drastically. Buffet has done well in America, but he’s given back a lot too.

Interestingly enough, some of the most inspirational leaders in the world had very humble beginnings. This highlights the fact that just about anyone can become an important member of modern society. That’s especially true in the United States. There’s nothing more inspiring than someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty simply to help others or a person who strives to improve the world through amazing technological advancements.