Not all smart people work at Sun Microsystems.
The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand.
Most of the bright people don't work for you - no matter who you are.
I think one of the interesting things is that vi is really a mode-based editor.
You can drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror as long as nothing is ahead of you. Not enough software professionals are engaged in forward thinking.
The best way to do research is to make a radical assumption and then assume it's true. For me, I use the assumption that object oriented programming is the way to go.