11 Geek Visionaries Who Created Technology We Can't Live Without

Can't imagine life without e-mail, your cell phone, and the Internet? Luckily, these technology visionaries couldn't either.

By Diann Daniel

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that people often don't know what they want until you show them. Today, it's impossible to imagine life without an iPod or a cell phone, but there was a time when the technologies we depend on so heavily didn't even exist. Except in the minds of visionaries.

Like much in life, new technology is often a team effort and it's difficult to point to just one person as "responsible." Still, we're calling out a few folks who were instrumental in creating technology that today, we can't imagine living without.

By the way, we'll feature Linus Torvalds and some more tech innovators in an upcoming slideshow. In the meantime, we'd like to hear from you: Which other visionaries have created or furthered the technology that made the greatest impact on our lives?

Alan Kay: The Laptop

Alan Kay can be credited in the late '60s with the visionary prototype of a small, powerful computer, or one of the first usable laptops. "I...started thinking about what would it be like for millions of people to have one of these machines," he later wrote. The technology to build his idea did not yet exist, so he concentrated on other things such as software design and the creation of easy-to-use programs, which led to such advances as graphical interfaces. But his notebook computer prototype was the inspiration later used by Apple and others.
Image credit: IDG News Service