Nerds: The Most Powerful Men in the World

In November 2009, Forbes magazine published a ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People. Power can be defined in many ways, but in the Forbes context it is limited to, and personified by, three categories: politicians, businessmen and billionaires. Some people are in two, even three of those categories at once. Nevertheless, a good read for anyone interested in knowing a bit more about the elite that currently “runs” the world.

Barack Obama heads the list, no surprise here, considering he is the “leader” of the world’s richest country. Second place goes to Hu Jintao, president of the People’s Republic of China. According to growth data and predictions from economists and analysts, China will soon become the 2nd largest economy in the world (it has already surpassed Germany). Third spot goes to the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladmir Putin. At 4th sits Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the man in charge of reestablishing the American economy. These are the four men which are currently in charge of guiding the governments and economy of some of the most influential countries in the world.

Other than placed in high government positions, all of them have something in common. Their spot in the top of the list, and maybe even in the list as a whole, is temporary. And I don’t mean temporary as in ‘they will all die one day’, but rather, their terms will soon come to an end. As it happened to George W. Bush, Jian Zemin, Viktor Zubkov and Alan Greenspan, which are not present in the list, the current top four will  soon pass on their influence to their successors.

Now you may ask: “OK, but where are you trying to get with all of this?” And the answer is… drum-roll… number 5! Ta-da!

At number five we have Sergey Bryn and Larry Page, the guys behind Google. Nerds are placed at number five in the Forbes list. There’s no need for me to talk about Google, you know what it is. My point is, these guys will most likely remain on the list longer than any of those who are currently listed above them. They may never be first or go higher than five, someone will always be the president of the U.S. or China, and so on. I’m not saying they are going to be in the list for as long as they are in business. I’m not even saying they are going to be in the list next year. Google may go bankrupt or whatever, but a very probable scenario is that it will remain as the leading  search engine on the planet for the foreseeable future. What is impressive about this is that these guys reached fifth place because of the information they have gathered about the world. People often say that ‘knowledge is power’, and Google is probably the best example of the truth behind that saying. They are not the largest nor the most profitable company out there, but they possess something much more valuable, they know what the world wants.