If you go through old CS OS texts on the matter, they really didn't have the same understanding of capabilities then as the later object-capabilities (ocap) model would introduce. Typically they would show an access control matrix, note that acls were rows and capabilities columns and note that they are duals of one another. They're the same, acls are easier to manage, done.
In some of the draft versions of ASCII the positions currently taken by underscore and caret were left arrow and up arrow respectively. As late as 1985 I used terminals (LanparScope) the supported the older draft.
Being a full-time writer has always been a tough gig unless it is attached to an institution (but that can corrupt the writing). I'm not sure why anyone would think it wasn't tough. The author/poet/painter starving in a garret was a well known stereotype. Just like most of the arts there is a supply and demand imbalance; lots (claim to) want to write, only a few will actually write to completion, and only a few of those will have written something someone else wants to read. And that's before the traditional publishing funnel.
On the other hand, I've known writers who make it work. Larry Correia has a lot of useful thoughts about it, he used to be an accountant before he got into writing and brings those skills to his analysis.
I would like to see an analysis including "non-traditional" publishing options, and how different kinds of writing sell. I suspect genre fiction is different from "literary" from non-fiction, etc.
Or for that matter, the magic that was a Tektronix storage scope terminal (and compatibles. At school there was a vt10x that had been modified to act like a Tek 4014 by some third party).
I'm still of the opinion that the right direction is something architectEd more like NeWS with better underlying language support. If you're going to break stuff make it a real improvement.
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