I view the difficulty/breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to begin a PhD as a tribute to humanity's successes (and hope to embark upon my own after retirement, though it'll be in CNC machining).
Only the rich can afford to own nothing/exert effort to have empty space without consequence.
Ordinary folks when presented with an object have to perform a mental calculation over the cost/inconvenience of storage vs. disposal and if wanted again, replacement.
I hope and pray that your research helps to make the world a better place and that the rest of us can use your knowledge to help to make the world a place which merits your research.
The wild thing is that the understanding of electron arrangement made a _huge_ difference in chemistry texts where overnight they went from myriad descriptions of reactions being commented as "...and this is not well understood" to quite thorough and rigorous explanations of chemical interactions.
The big problem is folks misunderstood it as documentation (arguably plain.tex should have also been the sourcecode for _The TeXbook_ and that it wasn't is a big part of this) --- it could be, but usually that's better as a separate text/chapter....
I've been trying to collect books on Literate Program/notable Literate Programs published as books:
Ages ago, back when the Macs would come out, my co-workers and I would take a bit of time to configure the most expensive possible configuration --- time was, it was pretty easy to hit six figures, but over time, that has gradually come down.
had become a mainstream Mac product rather than being co-opted for NeXT and use w/ Objective-C.
LISP clicked with me (when taking a comparative language class in college I was the only one who managed to do all of the LISP homework) and learning it was a lot of help in using TeX.
I just wish that there was:
- a nice native or cross-platform GUI toolkit for it which was opensource
- an easy way to distribute projects as stand-alone compiled code
Availability of parts is something of an issue --- couldn't get my father's 27-jewel Seiko repaired for want of parts, and still trying to justify the expense of either salvaging from another watch or paying someone to fabricate a replacement part.
(ages ago, I was in touch with a person who described himself as "the last hand engraver in New York City" when considering an apprenticeship --- couldn't commit to the move --- always wondered if he found a successor)
One of the best programmers I have ever met/worked with had a degree in philosophy, having started in the computer industry before there was widespread adoption of it as a formal subject --- he is one of only two people I've ever met outside of TeX User's Group Conferences who had read TAoCP (and kept a well-thumbed set of the first 3 volumes on a shelf at his desk).
Really miss working with him, but he has since moved on to better things in his choice of locale.
For a fun joke, check the index entry for "Royalties, use of" --- it points to a graph which is evocative of the layout of the pipe organ in his home which was funded by TAoCP book sales.
E-mails which are sent in about the various books used to be printed out and responded to --- I got a $2.88 physical reward check for finding an error and a point of improvement in _Digital Typography_. Not sure how they are handled now. Trying to find an error or point of improvement in v4f7 so that I can get an account at:
(usually, I do find errors in books, esp. e-books, which reminds me, I need to pick up the corrected 3rd printing of _The Fall of Arthur_ by J.R.R. Tolkien before I read it again, since that should have the error I found corrected).
There are a lot of specialty/niche apps showing up which are vibe coded --- tons of 3D CAD apps which are a variation/extension of OpenSCAD, a fair number of tools which work with G-code in various ways, &c.
On a commercial support forum I moderate we had to ban software announcements there were so many.
While not a movie, a bunch of NeXT Cubes (at least the monitors) were used in a Madonna video --- apparently some production company got a good deal on machines intended for Japan (hence the katakana interface)
The definition of homeless was quite different at that time --- note that there was an entire class of people defined as hobos/migrant workers who began the year helping out with cutting lumber and harvesting maple sugar in the winter, then working south to help with the planting of truck crops (lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas...) in the spring, pruning fruit trees and harvesting early crops in the summer, then in the fall helping with the harvests and picking cotton and so forth, then helping to plant cover crops and so forth and moving north to repeat the process.
Louis L'Amour writes on this a bit in his wonderful book: