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Inventor of the worldwide web named most influential person in tech industry
London, 9 October 2008: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, has been named the most influential person in the high-tech industry this year by a panel of experts in the ninth annual Agenda Setter's poll by silicon.com.
The silicon.com Agenda Setters top 50 list ranks the personalities driving and shaping the tech industry in 2008 and is a barometer of success within the IT sector.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has jumped to the top spot on the list, which also includes technology industry leaders such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Eric Schmidt of Google and Mark Hurd from HP.
Berners-Lee has appeared on the Agenda Setters top 50 a number of times, although never in the top slot, and is now back in the spotlight as a leading advocate of the development of the next-generation semantic web.
silicon.com editor Steve Ranger said: ""Sir Tim Berners-Lee embodies the spirit of Agenda Setters. Not content with inventing the worldwide web, he continues to make a giant contribution to its future development."
At number two on the list, Apple's Steve Jobs continues to innovate, in particular this year with the launch of the 3G iPhone. Third on the list is the UK's information commissioner Richard Thomas, reflecting the rising importance of data protection against a backdrop of high-profile data losses.
The Top 10 Agenda Setters for 2008 are:
- Sir Tim Berners-Lee, worldwide web inventor
- Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
- Richard Thomas, UK information commissioner
- Jimmy Wales, Wiki Media founder
- Mike Lynch, Autonomy founder and CEO
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
- Ashley Highfield, Project Kangaroo CEO
- Viviane Reding, European commissioner for information society and media
- Werner Vogels, Amazon VP and CTO
- Warren East, ARM CEO
Other technology leaders making the list this year include inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, (14), Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO (18), Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, Twitter co-founders (22), Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect (23) and Robin Li, Baidu CEO (50).
Last year's winner, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has fallen to number 47 on the list and is joined by another social networking executive, Dan Nye, CEO of business social network LinkedIn at number 48.
The full results and special report are available at www.siliconagendasetters.com.
Notes to Editors
The 2008 Agenda Setters Top 50 is:
- Sir Tim Berners-Lee, worldwide web inventor
- Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
- Richard Thomas, UK information commissioner
- Jimmy Wales, Wiki Media founder
- Mike Lynch, Autonomy founder and CEO
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO
- Ashley Highfield, Project Kangaroo CEO
- Viviane Reding, European commissioner for information society and media
- Werner Vogels, Amazon VP and CTO
- Warren East, ARM CEO
- JP Rangaswami, Blogger and BT Design MD
- Sverre Jarp, Cern chief technology officer
- Craig Mundie, Microsoft chief research and strategy officer
- Ray Kurzweil, Inventor and futurist
- Don Grice, IBM chief engineer
- Howard Stringer, Sony CEO
- Jonathon Porritt, Environmentalist
- Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
- Justin Rattner, Intel CTO
- Mark Hurd, HP CEO
- Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation CEO
- Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, Twitter co-founders
- Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect
- Peter Bazalgette, Reality TV guru
- Greg Wyler, O3b founder and CEO
- Neil Bacon, iWantGreatCare.org founder
- Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, RIM co-CEOs
- Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm, The Pirate Bay operators
- Simon Ponsford, Cranberry founder and CEO
- Richard Stallman, Free software advocate
- Jonney Shih, Asus CEO
- Neelie Kroes, Europe competition commissioner
- Edward Wray, Betfair co-founder
- Brent Hoberman, lastminute.com co-founder
- Hugh Loebner, AI researcher
- Sabeer Bhatia, Serial entrepreneur
- S Gopalakrishnan, Infosys CEO
- Mark Shuttleworth,Ubuntu project founder
- Ajay Mathur, Indian energy czar
- Aaron Seigo, KDE project developer
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO
- Bruce Schneier, BT chief security technology officer
- Jeremy Allison, Samba project co-founder
- Shai Agassi, Better Place founder and CEO
- Christina Domecq, SpinVox CEO and co-founder
- Arianna Huffington, Journalist and political activist
- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder
- Dan Nye, LinkedIn CEO
- Jonathan Zittrain, Cyber scholar
- Robin Li, Baidu CEO
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