Then I did a lot of thinking and prototyping around grammar-based procedural generation. I'd noticed that all the research on this stopped at simplistic academic models. But I'd realized that all industrial design is intensely grammatical, so why couldn't I easily whip up a 3D model of a toilet or the Pixar lamp with just a sentence? Well, a few years ago a professional architect turned programmer noticed this too, and turned that dull academic research into a sophisticated and expensive Unity asset: http://www.archimatix.com/gallery
I worked on a GPU accelerated OS shell in 2003, before Vista did it. Mine was actually 3D though, which never caught on.
I'm working on a thing right now that I believe will be ubiquitous in games and especially VR. I've scoured the web and haven't found a single word written about it. It's sufficiently ahead of its time that although I have a very clear understanding of it, and have no trouble saying a lot of words about it, it's very hard to communicate the value to others. And no I'm not telling what it is, unless you're an angel investor :D