That talk had a really inspiring energy to it. When it started I thought Yegge sounded nervous and jittery and seemed a little intense, like he had a chip on h

That talk had a really inspiring energy to it. When it started I thought Yegge sounded nervous and jittery and seemed a little intense, like he had a chip on his shoulder and I thought "Oh boy, I hope he doesn't do a melt-down". Then as the talk progressed, I realized he was just excited/nervous and that's how he talks. He gradually hit his stride and the message that his talk was meant to convey slowly started to take shape for me... and it's a hell of a positive message. It is a call-to-arms to give a damn and use our powers for the advancement of everyone. To stop spending out free time working on icanhascheezeburger SMS alert apps and pickup a book on mathematics, bioinfomatics, data mining and other hard topics and start learning. It is a call to arms to send yourself back to school (in a sense) that don't be afraid to start learning about other topics that have always seemed interesting to you but maybe you figured were outside of your area of effect, e.g. "I'm a server guy, I'll never do anything interesting in 3D visualization!" It is also a call to arms to make money and effect change with principle; like a Google or an Amazon. You don't need to scrape every last piece of skin off of your customers hide in order to post big quarterly profits to be successful. You can develop positive relationships with your customers, employees and the world around you and STILL make the money necessary to continue growing an innovating. The "quitting" part of the talk is unimportant, it was just his way of illuminating his point. The value is in his message.