“A novel “Thought Leader Map” shows the select group of people with real influence who are setting the trends in the market for ideas. The influencers in philosophy, sociology, economics, and the “hard sciences” have been identified by a Delphi process, asking 50 thought leaders to name their peers. The importance of the influencers is calculated by constructing a co-occurrence network in the Blogosphere.”
Here is the ranking of the blogs, and Core77 comes in 11th:
Without down-playing the achievement, the “Delphi method” is a whole lot of a certain type of people, nominating their peer group - so by its nature it’s self selective.
Also there might be a bit of "keeping up with the Jones’ "; how many people who own a copy of “A brief history of the universe” have actually read it?
This forum specifically got mentioned in Wired in a similar list, if Oprah mentions core it’ll win the trifecta.
Modern Man is an advocate for thinking for oneself, which is rather ironic considering that he can barely maintain full command and control over his own mind.
Wired lists the DISCUSSION FORUMS as one of the most influential design sources:
Core77 MESSAGE BOARD
This is still where industrial designers go to hash out big challenges in actually shipping products. The collective wisdom runs deep.
