lightbulb

It would look like light from a lightbulb. We already see light in the specific frequency peak of the sun. If we could see wifi, it would be like a lightbulb that dimly appears to pass through walls.

Always working on puzzles but never knowing when the lightbulb will go off. When it does, dropping everything to build the solution that popped into our head.

Like Edison and the lightbulb, like Gates and the pc operating system... I was about to become the first person in America to sell condom key chains.

The lightbulb that went off in my head was that every legal document you sign is basically a business transaction: you give up something, they give up something, and hopefully what they're giving up is worth more to you than what you're giving up. So one way to think about this is to forget whether it's "common" or "routine" and imagine this thought experiment.

If we keep using the lightbulb as a metaphor, we keep the old on/off API and add a dimmer switch which can be controlled over the network, an access control list, and a structure which can define the light bulb's color, direction, luminosity, et cetera. With enough engineers, you can design the last light bulb you'll ever need. The Open Source way is to have seventeen different teams design seventeen different lightbulbs, including one that can scale to 5000W and cause immediate retina damage, and a 1/4W red LED barely bright enough to read by which light bulb users on forums swear by because it's not bloated, and a Gnome light bulb which removed the dimmer in version 3 because only 5% of the user base was even aware that the dimmer existed.