Ask YC: what is your most important idea?
Two hundred years from now, what piece of work would you like to be remembered for most?
If you had one year to devote to working on one project, after which you could never code again, what would you make?
If you had one year to devote to working on one project, after which you could never code again, what would you make?
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.
All the internet entrepreneurs, all the ones who became richer than Croesus - their achievement was to become gatekeepers for a zillionth of the wealth that the Internet and the Web have bestowed on the world. And then they became targets for other people, who had piled up maybe a zillionth and a half of that wealth, and people like Arrington can't shut up about them.
If you want to change the world, and the people know your name, you're doing it wrong.
May be their original work is not in much use these days but they opened a new domains for future generations to work on and that created the shift.
Like neilk says, fame and impact in many cases don't correlate. And that's okay. The people that made TCP/IP are/were probably satisfied with what they'd accomplished, and beyond that, who cares.
I like to think that the reason our industry has taken off so well is because the things we work with are available to kids to play with.
I notice that a lot of the big brains in CompSci follow your mentality, also - Woz and Alan Kay come to mind.
I don't remember the exact quote, but it goes something along the lines of "If you want to be remembered 100 years from now, you need to kill a lot of people"
How about Vanderbilt and Astor? I doubt you'll find many people who know who they are.
Wealth alone doesn't get you into history books, you may fund some expedition, but it'll be Louis & Clarke who'll get into the history books.
I don't think Warren Buffet will be remembered, which I find sad. But I believe Jobs will live on as a sort of legend of his own.
Quick: Who was Harry Truman's VP?
Really, anything that does the generic idea presented above. Whenever you present a simple method of doing something, the whole system tips.
In any case, I've already gotten the trivial solutions =)
"If there's one thing I am truly proud of, it's that I've wasted all my talents, contributed nothing to the human race, and will not be remembered by generations yet to come."
If you're doing things because you want to be remembered for them, you're doing things for all the wrong reasons and will never be remembered for anything.