I don't care who his friends are. I don't find people interesting because of the company they keep or track their career because they interviewed someone. Galafinakis isn't worth fawning over because he mock-interviewed Obama. Baskets wasn't interesting either.

Any guy quitting facebook (who can sign up again for free in a heartbeat, it's zero risk) is an event, granted. Might as well talk about the time someone quit selling on eBay or had a video removed by Youtube or went to Ohio. It doesn't mean anything until you sensationalize it. This indicates that it is not news, but raw sensationalism.

I am not saying that to belittle the man in any sort of way, or diminish his accomplishments, I am just simply saying it shouldn't be surprising that people haven't heard of some other people, despite how famous others think he or she might be. Pretty sure there is an XKCD for this. I have my categories of people where I would react the same way ("What do you mean you have never heard of Carl Sassenrath!?" as an example).

That's hilarious, I have definitely heard of Walt Mossberg but I have never heard of Carl Sassenrath

;) He is the father of multitasking! Definitely an important figure in computing history -- he created the Amiga Computer operating system kernel and also was a pivotal figure in HP's early successes as well. I think he works at Roku now.

Also a reminder how crazy young the field of computer science is -- important figures are still as young as 62! Kind of cool in a way. I hope to get to meet him in person.

That's a fair point. In my world, Walt's name is as recognizable as Bjarne Stroustrup - one is for techies, the other is for the rest of the population.

EDIT: Right after posting this, I realized my world was ambiguous - "my world" is simply the people I interact with and the information that flows between us - not making a qualitative judgement.

I have not heard of any of the dudes on any of the comments in this thread. Neither Carl Sassenrath nor Walt Mossberg nor Bjarne Stroustrup. Now I am concerned.

Yeah.. if you haven't seen any of those interviews ^, I'd give them a watch. They're still pretty relevant.