I sincerely believe that programming has gone through a couple of paradigms over the decades. For instance it used to be a good thing to never be scared of architecting a solution from the ground up (and the best often did) whereas nowadays our ecosystem of libraries and tools are so vast that it much more often is overkill, and the architect mentality often a handicap. (This is obviously just one person's opinion)
Sounds principles are sometimes tied to these paradigms. For instance in past years one could maybe say "never use a tool that you don't know well" whereas nowadays with all of the layers of technologies that you are forced to work with it may have changed to just knowing why you have to use a technology and knowing well the aspects that you are using it for.
Also, there are by now many generations of programmers, and we might not want to admit it but the people that grew up on assembly do tend to have different sensibilities than the people that grew up on scripting languages. With these generations often come ingrained mentalities that are tied to paradigms that are tied to principles which in fact are still subject to change.
There is a whole other sector of philosophy that is almost completely divorced from science that is often called "Continental Philosophy". It deals with all of the classic problems -- meaning, love, truth, etc. The U.S. tends to not hear a lot about it, but it's huge in the non-english speaking world. Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy
I think this shows that standards bodies could implement less native language functionality and let community-made libraries/tools compete for those areas. ES6 goes so far as to implement a native module system, seriously calling into question any effort by the community at large to implement a competing system (e.g. browserify, requirejs).
Bryan Cantril (the writer of the article) is an interesting and ebullient dude. If you haven't seen him talk take a look: here's his talk on corporate anti-patterns (as referenced in the article) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhgXQFk9noI
And then I go to shake somebodies hand/ wave to somebody / hold a sandwich and I have this thing stuck to my hand.
Edit: Might be different if it wasn't so hard, big (across my whole hand), and plasticy. Gloves and rings don't seem to cause much trouble during day to day activities.
There is a difference between research and academia. Academia in an institution, with specific ways of becoming a member (thesis, tenure) and structure to support the sharing of information (journals, conferences). These structures don't fit well with startups.
Behavioral research and drawing insights from huge amounts of social data is definitely useful for the startup industry. But people can do this completely outside of academia where there aren't massive barriers to entry. And they can share their findings using blogs, books, github, consulting, etc.
How does this make my life better/easier? Tv's have been trying to do this and nobody really cares. Take the Nest example ... why don't I just literally turn the Nest device?
I'm not saying this couldn't have a practical use -- just that you aren't proving it.