I can honestly say that the best thing to have come out of this article was the link to Bret Victors talk on inventing on pricple - http://vimeo.com/36579366#t=1004. Thank you.
Thanks for singling that out. The specific demos of interactive coding/visualization were cool, but the end where he really gets into the general topic of finding a guiding principle and using that to change the world - was very, very well worth the time to listen to.