I really dislike this article and fundamentally disagree. Sure, some engineers need to be looking at the problems people have or the products they're trying to

I really dislike this article and fundamentally disagree. Sure, some engineers need to be looking at the problems people have or the products they're trying to buy or whatever, but that's not why I'm here. The goal, especially when starting out, is to: 1. Obsessively understand, improve and optimise everything, knowing that many of the results will not make it into real products or if they do will flop; and 2. Invent things that nobody asked for. Things that are weird and ideological and unlikely and confusing and just plain cool, knowing that many of thee too will fail. Why 1? Because sometimes the things in 2 only become possible by mashing together a bunch of the things in 1 that looked like they weren't really worth it or useful. Why 2? Because noone can really predict what people want or need, or would like, once you get into the realm of new technology and ideas that are sufficiently different from what we have today. Many things about life in the future will and should be radically different than they are now (this is not something special about now, it has been true on generational timelines at least since the beginning of the industrial revolution and on longer timelines forever). Experimentation and ignoring business cases and customers is that future happens. If you want to think about "consumer challenges" and worry whether your idea is a viable business rather than just giving it a go, iterating rapidly, and having an idea about when to stop if it doesn't work out, be my guest, but to me this is an incredily dull, mercenary view of the future.