So long as it's a kind of adolescence period, it's not all that much of a 'waste'. Very good tools are being built to do mundane and transient things - but they are still good tools. Good ways to visualize, sort, design and otherwise interact on a gigantic network are being fine-tuned and honed.<p>Now imagine how, once made easy, pretty, useful and rapidly developable, those 'non-foolish' ideas will be after a decade or two of sustained practice on the 'foolish' ideas. It could be quite possible these foolish ideas are the etudes to the valley's greater works of art.<p>I'm graduating from a hard science PhD shortly, and I'd love to be able to sic the ease, prettiness, and developmental talent onto some pretty hardcore problems.