In programming in companies: realization that internal customers not having choice of internal IT providers hurts IT because it reduces IT's need to deliver valuable solutions effectively.

In leadership: management structure is a framework to enforce standardization and generally doesn't adapt well to change, even with the latest management silver bullets (lean, Agile, flat-orgs, etc)

Also in leadership: profound changes are occuring in society and geographies no longer define cultures.

In commercial writing: it's still early, and this takes time, but the concept of the "book" and how it's created is changing. Technologies that allow writers, editors, and beta readers to work on the manuscript simultaneously are increasing the velocity of change.

In art in general: someone else here mentioned music creation and payment is enabling entrants to sustain themselves in niche markets. This is happening in nearly all art forms, not just music. As electronic transfer fidelity increases, more art can be digitized, monetized. Look for more politicized, more global-reach art.

All these things stem from a greater understanding of the world and of human beings, starting with ourselves. It's important to realize each human being is a highly complex system and that generalizations about groups of humans are increasingly being challenged as scientifically unsound.

I also don't contribute much to SO, or to any SE properties, despite being on the early public beta. (remember the signup as a google spreadhseet). I'm ID 479 on SO.

I decided to go ubuntu 14.whatever on a laptop that had XP on it (Acer One) and keep it as-is, as a new user.

I was pleasantly surprised. install was smooth, all hardware works, and I just installed firefox, and it all works (99% of flash works).

I use it for gmail, facebook, twitter, ello, surfing, etc. The machine is underpowered for full-motion video, but oh well, it was $349 6 years ago.

I use terminal to ssh into remote servers, and I've done no configuration at all on the machine. it works fine.

Update 5:02 PST: All out, sorry.

Besides, I much prefer spending time with my son reading Asterix the Gaul comic books.

People in America who grew up on Nintendo and Xbox don't have a clue how stupidly brutal the world can be. This is why these "highly educated people" are "actually for it".

I will grant you that these activities should be under the oversight of the US government, State governments, who represent the People of the United States. The FBI is such a federal government agency.

Hopefully we never work together.