Sunday, Apr. 16, 2006
Who Should Be Among This Year's Picks for the TIME 100?
To help make the selection, TIME asked earlier honorees whom they would select as the world's most influential people. This week's installment:
EVAN WOLFSON The same-sex-marriage advocate is executive director of Freedom to Marry Senator Russ Feingold should be on the list for putting forward values and policies before the American people and offering Democrats a chance to return to the clarity and authenticity needed to regain power. From his opposition to the war in Iraq to his support for ending the exclusion of committed same-sex couples from marriage, he is emerging as the one to watch as the political pendulum swings.
DAVE EGGERS The best-selling author and McSweeney's founder is also a social-work entrepreneur I nominate John Prendergast. He is a lucid and vocal "explainer" of what's happening in Darfur and what needs to be done. He has been working in Sudan for 20 years and has been instrumental in mobilizing Americans to get involved on a grass-roots level. Also Shirin Neshat, who is making some of the most riveting art about the Muslim world. It's majestic, timeless, frightening and even prophetic.
BRAM COHEN Creator of BitTorrent, the world's most popular open-source file-sharing software I nominate Steven Soderbergh, director, writer and producer, who broke Hollywood dogma by releasing his movie Bubble simultaneously in theaters, on cable TV and DVD. He's willing to experiment with new technologies to deliver what consumers want. Also William Poundstone, whose book Fortune's Formula gives a readable explanation of how investing for the most profit inherently involves roller-coaster downturns. It's an insightful analysis.
PETER SINGER
The Princeton bioethics professor is co-author of the forthcoming book The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter I nominate Jeffrey Sachs and Bono for setting the world an achievable goal that is also a moral imperative: the end of extreme poverty by 2025. They made that an issue the 2005 G-8 summit had to take up. Though the measures adopted there were less dramatic than many hoped, if the rhetoric is turned into reality, it will make a huge difference for hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people.