I like the approach that Summerhill and Sudbury students tend to follow: after finishing "high school", they work in the world, thus earning money and gaining experience, and then they attend college if they think it is right for them. They work for their tuition, and they don't party away their school life.
I also overdosed on TV and got rid of it around college time. That is, until Netflix came along. Now I'm thinking about unsubscribing from Netflix. I like what he says about needing a break: you just need to exercise another part of your brain. And that is what I've discovered to be the solution for work-life balance: take a break from work, and immerse yourself in family time, so that you can return to work refreshed. You shouldn't feel guilty for missing out on work while with your family, nor guilty for working while not being with your family, as long as there is balance, because you need to satisfy different needs at different times, and it helps you return to full power.
Silicon Valley isn't a city. San Francisco is. I don't know whether Jacobs wanted to encourage such factors --- she turned city planning on its head with her book in 1960, and it was a data-driven book, while the orthodoxy at the time satisfied "The urbanists are merely one group who hasn't figured out that when an argument suggests/implies behavior that doesn't happen, the argument is wrong, no matter how appealing the proponents find the conclusion or proposals."
Sounds like they are ignoring Jane Jacobs. Her four rules for a flourishing city area: the area must serve more than one primary function, and preferably more than two; most blocks must be short; the district must involve mixed aged buildings; and there must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people.
How did Sputnik come into the picture? I didn't see Sputnik mentioned by the NSA article. It just said that the messages were received from outer space: "Recently a series of radio messages was heard coming from outer space."
I used to alternate between sitting and standing. I don't need to any more. The trick for me, figured out by a therapist, was to build the proper muscles, and to always hold proper posture. I find that I can sit anywhere with comfort now, even on the crappiest chairs, because I use my muscles to support me, not the chair. When you stand, you do the same. I've come to appreciate the importance of our muscles and how they contribute to one's quality of life.
I look forward to reading his online book. There are quite a few interesting books from the 60s on this topic, including Paul Goodman's "Compulsory Miseducation" --- which you can read online at http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys%20from%20Trash/Resources/... --- and A.S. Neill's Summerhill, and Dennison's The Lives of Children. All three offer a formal framework for addressing this topic: how we learn and develop is a psychological matter, not one of grades, nor figuring out how to fill a kid's head with facts. Contemporary work on cognitive and psychological development (unintentionally) corroborates this viewpoint (as far as I can tell, which is part time research, since full time I write code).