sgtsugarfingers

This reminds me of a really funny image I saw recently. It depicted the perceived consequences of a status update against the "reality". At the top, Obama was presenting to a cheering crowd and just below, Tom Hanks sat marooned on an island screaming desperately at his inanimate volleyball. It's easy to feel like the master of the universe when the whole world is there to cheer for you through digitally mediated approval metrics. But people are not toys sitting idly to provide us a convenient hit of oxytocin when we need it. It's crucial to be reminded of that! Providing a number to call someone and apologize for bailing on them is a spark of genius. Using all this digital stuff should enrich interactions in meatspace, rather than allow us to decouple from it. Bravo!

Surveillance in the name of convenience has gone too far. I can see a future where companies offer services as wrappers around visually analyzing people's behavior in their own homes. They will sell that data just as they do now. That's not a future I encourage.

The article didn't make any religious argument for the command line opposed to a GUI. His background is the opposite of yours. For him, relying on the ease of a graphical interface was a habitual deterrent to stepping out of his comfort zone and learning the CLI. Temporarily restricting himself to use only CLI was a focusing mechanism to help him gain strength in a weak area. His efforts demonstrate the hacker ethic quite well. He could have easily stuck with the familiar, but decided to force himself to go out on a limb.

Out of curiosity, what other well known corporate R&D / internal incubators exist out there?