Let me take this opportunity to say "happy birthday Walter Mondale."
In my industry, Linux has been dominating in terms of being behind anything
that smells like high-performance computing. In my colleagues' industries, it
is behind embedded systems for autonomous systems, remote sensing, etc. Most
of our day-to-day uses in society are to provide convenience in information
sharing (social media, news, uber-style apps, etc). We are still figuring out
how to use them, and hence big conventions like the on-going one in Las Vegas
where companies are displaying IoT stuff, are taking place. Ironically, all I
see is technology being used to promote itself, coming full circle but with
little substance. Too many tools to hack with, so little hacking!
Perhaps we should go back to books that talk about the grand challenges of past
times. People who inspire on the use of computers are people like Stephen
Wolfram, where he basically tackles biology with a strange computational
approach ("A new type of science" published in the 90s). We used to hack all
day (and night) to come up with cool stuff to show our friends. But perhaps we
need to stop consuming the information that is coming at us (from computers)
and start thinking about what problems we want to see solved. Then, we start
hitting keys on the keyboard to make it happen.
I have too many hobbies to be the visionary, but I can be easily distracted
when stimulated enough to help!