If you like “this sort of thing“, you should watch this talk by Mark Bernstein.
It talk isn’t a TED talk, it isn’t on StrangeLoop, but it might be the best overview of this area yet.
Touches on lost tools, lost ideas, some things you thought were recent but aren’t, etc.
Full set of slides here.
If you’re still curious, I’d suggest looking at his homepage, and plug the excellent tool that he’s been building and improving over decades, Tinderbox.
Some screenshots of slides1, to whet your appetite:
- Though, as he points out, given the pitiful computational power of that era, the ideas are much better than the way they appear as demos on old hardware. ↩
Abacus Noir 