This list includes presidents, scientists, killers, dictators, and more! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the individuals who have had the most massive impact on life in the 21st Century.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 "I'll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be
00:05 it."
00:06 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the individuals who have
00:09 had the most massive impact on life in the 21st century.
00:12 And while a few are incredibly inspirational figures dedicated to serving all humanity
00:15 like scientists, this list also includes various killers, tyrants, and dictators.
00:19 So in regards to them, remember that inclusion here does not mean approval in any way, shape,
00:24 or form.
00:25 "It's chaos because that's how he installed his authorities, inside and outside of Russia."
00:31 Number 10.
00:32 Mark Zuckerberg
00:33 Facebook originally began as an insular online community for college students.
00:36 "When we first launched, we were hoping for, you know, maybe 400, 500 people.
00:41 Harvard didn't have a Facebook, so that's the gap that we were trying to fill."
00:45 Twenty years later, it's the biggest social networking platform in the world, and everyone
00:48 and their grandma is on it.
00:50 Mark Zuckerberg is the entrepreneur and philanthropist behind MetaPlatforms, the parent company behind
00:54 Facebook, which later acquired Instagram and WhatsApp.
00:57 "So Instagram is great, right?
00:58 I mean, they're this super talented group of engineers.
01:03 They're building this amazing product.
01:05 They just crossed 100 million registered users, and they're killing it."
01:09 With his eye on building a virtual and augmented reality network called the Metaverse, he's
01:12 come a long way, and has ambitions to go even further.
01:15 Despite his success, Meta has been embroiled in lawsuits concerning web privacy and data
01:19 security.
01:20 These are issues that will only be more relevant as we continue to live out our lives on the
01:24 internet.
01:25 "If I knew what I knew now then, then I hope I wouldn't have made those mistakes,
01:28 but I can't go back and change the past.
01:31 I can only do what we think is the right thing going forward."
01:34 9.
01:35 Catelyn Carrico and Drew Weissman
01:36 It's almost hard to believe even now how precious life felt during the early days of
01:40 the COVID-19 pandemic.
01:41 While there are people we will never hear about who were also working towards a vaccine,
01:45 it was Penn State's Catelyn Carrico and Drew Weissman who made it possible.
01:48 "We did it because of interest and curiosity."
01:53 Carrico is a biochemist, while Weissman is an immunologist, and together, their research
01:57 brought about a breakthrough in messenger RNA-assisted vaccines that once seemed like
02:00 a pipe dream.
02:01 "People tell me that the vaccines have probably saved 20 million lives.
02:08 That was my life goal, to be able to help a few people."
02:12 Their awards and accolades include the renowned Nobel Prize, and their work significantly
02:16 stalled the progress of the pandemic, saved untold millions of lives, and could have tremendous
02:20 import for other illnesses.
02:21 "We couldn't have come to the result without both of us being involved."
02:27 8.
02:28 Sergey Brin and Larry Page
02:29 It's not always invention that makes an impact.
02:31 It is reinvention.
02:32 Google, of course, was not the first search engine, but these two classmates at Stanford
02:36 University brought about an information revolution.
02:38 Co-founding the leading search engine, Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed a new algorithm
02:42 that had the ability to rank pages in order of relevance.
02:45 "But it seemed like no one was really looking at the links on the web, you know, which pages
02:48 linked to which pages, and computer scientists love big graphs, and this is like, you know,
02:53 right now it has like 5 billion edges, and you know, 2 billion nodes, so it's a huge
02:58 graph.
02:59 And I figured I could get a dissertation and do something fun and perhaps practical at the
03:04 same time."
03:05 Again, while this wasn't totally new, what set Google apart was that it culled together
03:08 the best of its competitive search engines, and then left them in the dust.
03:12 "You did not launch any great marketing campaign.
03:15 You literally let it expand by word of mouth."
03:18 "That's right.
03:19 We launched the search engine originally at Stanford, we carried over the traffic to the
03:23 Google.com site, and we grew from there."
03:26 By 2004, Google itself had become a verb, and acquisitions of moneymakers like Android
03:30 and YouTube bolstered its unbelievably broad influence.
03:33 "The deal was mutually beneficial for both parties.
03:37 Google won the war on online video traffic, and YouTube, barely a year old at the time,
03:43 gained access to Google's hefty resources."
03:45 Bryn and Page's brainchild has since netted them top spots on the list of the world's
03:50 richest and most influential people.
03:52 7.
03:53 Xi Jinping
03:54 China has massive global ambition and import, and Xi Jinping is at its head.
03:57 Holding the office of President, Military Chairman, and the General Secretary of the
04:01 Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping has consolidated enormous power.
04:05 Often compared to former Chairman Mao Zedong, Xi has worked to re-centralize power around
04:09 himself as paramount leader.
04:10 He's overseen the constitutional amendment that removed presidential term limits.
04:14 Xi Jinping has also ushered in a new era of Chinese assertiveness on the world stage.
04:19 He's silencing his critics with one of the world's most rigorous censorship regimes.
04:23 But with the accumulation of great power comes great risks.
04:29 Xi has been criticized internationally for intense censorship practices, institutionalized
04:34 hostility towards religious minorities, and continued aggression in international relations.
04:38 These policies are already coming into play in major global conflicts and territorial
04:42 disputes.
04:44 The banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics is now flying high and proud.
04:49 It offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.
04:54 6.
04:55 Jeff Bezos
04:56 It doesn't matter to me whether we're a pure internet player.
04:58 What matters to me is to provide the best customer service.
05:01 Internet schminternet.
05:02 Amazon Inc. began as a pitty little internet bookseller in a garage in Bellevue, Washington.
05:07 By the year 2020, founder Jeff Bezos had overseen its expansion into areas as far-flung as film
05:11 and TV production, cloud computing, and AI.
05:14 Amazon's massive warehouses dot the landscape from sea to shining sea, and made one-day
05:18 delivery the standard by which all other e-commerce companies compete.
05:37 Bezos' success and Amazon's growth are miraculous, but both he and the company have
05:41 been criticized by anti-monopoly and labor activists.
06:00 Sharp criticism directed at its data collection, its opposition toward unions, and its environmental
06:04 impact haven't slowed it down.
06:06 Bezos stepped down as CEO in 2021, but his legacy lives on in Amazon's near-ubiquity
06:10 among customers.
06:25 Number 5.
06:26 Steve Jobs Few people have affected the minutia of everyday
06:29 life in the current century quite like Apple's co-founder and longtime public face.
06:33 Steve Jobs' true innovation was the iPhone.
06:35 Though not the first smartphone, the iPhone set the standard.
06:46 Under Jobs' leadership, Apple transformed a device that was still largely a status symbol
06:50 and gave it mass appeal, improved software, and a competitive price tag.
06:59 Apple has become a global colossus, the most valuable company in the world.
07:03 From what's in our pockets to the way we think, work, and communicate with each other,
07:06 Jobs and the company he co-founded revolutionized connectivity in the digital world.
07:14 Number 4.
07:15 Vladimir Putin In the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia experienced
07:18 a kind of identity crisis as it tried to compete in the world of globalized capitalism.
07:33 Ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin eventually became acting president as the century turned, and
07:49 has been the president or prime minister of Russia in the years since.
08:04 His tenure has been denounced both at home and abroad for his authoritarianism, including
08:08 the brutal and illegal war on Ukraine.
08:17 Shrouded by corruption and myriad human rights violations, Putin's Russia is still chasing
08:21 the purported glory days of the Soviet Union.
08:23 Number 3.
08:24 Elon Musk To some, he's a genius of innovation.
08:33 To others, he's an egotistical, radical, right-wing buffoon.
08:36 His polarizing views on the COVID-19 pandemic and other social issues, along with his acquisition
08:40 of Twitter, have made him the target of skepticism and controversy.
08:43 There's no denying, though, that the world's richest man is ambitious.
08:55 Born into an affluent South African family, Elon Musk embarked on a series of entrepreneurial
08:59 endeavors before striking it big with PayPal.
09:01 From then on, he founded, co-founded, and simply took over several technologically innovative
09:05 companies.
09:25 From satellites to electric vehicles to accelerating the growth of artificial intelligence, Musk
09:30 has had his hand in virtually every burgeoning industry you can think of.
09:53 Number 2.
09:54 Osama Bin Laden Many had heard the al-Qaeda leader's name
09:56 before September 11, 2001.
09:58 He had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list since 1999 after his involvement with
10:02 the bombings of American embassies in East Africa the year before.
10:06 Few would forget him after he was revealed as the mastermind behind the hijackings and
10:09 mass killings of 9/11.
10:15 A ten-year manhunt ensued, ending with his death during a raid in Pakistan in 2011.
10:27 Even as late as 2023, this terrorist's writings went viral on social media as a result of
10:33 war in the Middle East.
10:43 Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
10:46 Narendra Modi The controversial prime minister has propelled
10:48 India's shift to the political right.
11:01 Pope Francis This pontiff has championed a surprisingly
11:04 relatively progressive agenda.
11:22 Rupert Murdoch This media mogul has made billions and transformed
11:25 journalism with sensationalistic and politicized news.
11:44 Angela Merkel Germany's first female chancellor steered
11:46 the EU through the global financial crisis.
12:13 George W. Bush The 43rd president's original claim to political
12:17 relevance was his name and his tenure as governor of Texas.
12:20 Then he became president, and 9/11 followed soon after.
12:31 Terrorism became an everyday threat.
12:33 The Bush administration's Patriot Act chipped away at privacy in the name of defense.
12:37 Vice President Dick Cheney and others in his administration may have also been the architects.
12:41 But Bush became the public face of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
12:53 While successors Barack Obama and Donald Trump also have been hugely influential, for wildly
12:57 divergent reasons, the conflicts of George W. Bush's tenure still impact America and
13:01 the world.
13:09 Which influential figure were you shocked didn't make the list?
13:12 Let us know in the comments!
13:27 Thanks for watching!
13:35 (upbeat music)
13:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]