Every time someone complains about tech businesses not taking on the big problems, I'm reminded of the early days of computer graphics when there were all sorts

Every time someone complains about tech businesses not taking on the big problems, I'm reminded of the early days of computer graphics when there were all sorts of complicated algorithms to figure out which parts of a complex arrangement of polygons would be visible on the screen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visibility_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visibility_problem It turned out that the best way is generally the comparatively crude z-buffer. (I'm not super educated on this, this was just a story my prof told me). The point is that the big technical problems that need the most research muscle aren't necessarily that important, and you can't really know what the future needs ahead of time.