Ask HN: Who is “ahead of his/her time” nowadays?

Richard Stallman - 30 years ahead of time for free-software, privacy and licenses.

Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton - 20 to 30 years ahead of their time for research on AI, neural networks, convolutional neural networks and their many applications to them.

Theo de Raadt - 20 years ahead of time for security-focused operating system OpenBSD and its software projects.

Perhaps the person we all would have liked to have known who was indeed ahead of their time is Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bruce Sterling has consistently been 5-15 years ahead of his time in terms of the direction of popular culture since the late 70s. That is a very good run. He's not hyper-technical, but if you want to know what people will care about & how people will think in a decade, listen to what Bruce is saying now.

Jeff Hawkins