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As the example of Strauss demonstrates, influence does not necessarily go hand in hand with visibility. An influential man or woman can be like the vanishing point in a painting, invisible until you realize how much of the picture is determined by its position. Ask anybody these days to name the most prominent person in American business, and the likely answer is Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates. Something about the combination of a glamour industry and an 11-figure fortune gets noticed. But think about the man whose business has had the greatest impact in changing how people actually live lately, and a better answer is Netscape Communications chairman Jim Clark. He attracted the right talent to transform the dormant power of computing by providing truly easy access to the Internet, which, before Netscape, might as well have been the Crab Nebula, considering all the trouble it took the average person to get there.
In an open and democratic system, the strength of a society comes from the close interplay between power and influence. In voting booths and in the marketplace, influential ideas and sentiments and tastes and visions will be detected and eventually embraced by those in power. Or they won't be in power very long.
--Reported by Ratu Kamlani/New York