Selfie

Idiot genius.

Steve Jobs is always right, except for when he is wrong. Later he claims that contradicting idea as his own, and equilibrium is restored. He felt abandoned by his biological parents. He then abandoned his own illegitemit child, and later named a product line after her. With someone classifiablely genius the yangs will always equal and oppose the yin's.

Jobs's charisma and charm equals his darkness and ability to alienate. This polarity is not exclusive to Jobs and can be found in most genius men or women. The ironically their lives and works influence so many, yet most of us couldn't stand to be around them.

Not all of us can or will be geniuses. Not all of us will have biographies written and documentaries filmed about us, and that's okay. We may be completely level, maybe even boring, but we can and do make a difference. We can influence just a few people and still consider ourselves world changers without all the neurotic overhead.

Association. Stereotyping. Sexism. spells...

As programmers, women already have enough stereotypes to overcome before even getting around to talking about gender. This problem is--of course--not singly inflicting computer science. It's everywhere. The names on women's very own shampoo bottles are not women's names; they're men's. But don't take my word for it. Take her's. I am optimistic that these stereotypes will and are changing, but it is going to take a long time. What are we to do? Well for starters we could reprogram Barbie's asinine sayings which include: "Math is hard." and "Shopping is fun."

The Great Flat.

I work with many skilled professionals who have spent many years honing their craft in the visual effects industry. One in particular wanted to build an awesome matte painting workflow in Blender but found it lacking some key features. Since Blender was open source he figured he could just hire a few developers and then license those tools to his colleges. Not going to happen. The not-so-open Blender big wigs didn't think that aligned with the Blender prerogative and offered no help. Consequently, they lost an opportunity to provide a very powerful feature set. Does that seem right to you? By discouraging monetization it eliminates the product's ability to really nail the specifics, and all that remains is a general mush.

Graphene

Remember the industrial revolution? No you don't. It was a long time ago, but once given the ability to manufactor cheap steel we completely transformed society. And it is happening again. This new material is a one atom think hexagonal sheet of graphite called graphene and electrons love it! Being one atom thick it allows electricity to flow through it with remarkable ease. It is used to create quick-charge batteries that would take about 3 seconds to charge a smart phone, or about 10 minutes to charge an electric car battery. It converts windows into solar panels. It converts a layer of teflon it into a capacitive touch screen. Graphene also allows capacitors to reach their absolute minimum size with maximum efficiency. And you thought silicon was cool? The real kicker is, it is right around the corner. Like steel, once manufactoring methods reduce the cost to create graphene you can expect to see it pretty much everywhere.