[jrowen]

Another thought is that, I might be more likely to apply the term "ocean of uselessness" to a lot of what goes on in industry than to what academics are striving for.

People like having a job and a paycheck and accomplishing units of utility. But kludging together some libraries and maintaining another CRUD app isn't all that important or interesting in the grand scheme of things. The Von Neumann architecture and asymptotic analysis are, though.