Yeah, I think there was a recent nytimes.com article (haha, I know) which pointed out that a lot of the gadgets and apps these young white guy programmers are making are mostly for the needs of....young white guy programmers, so they are about pizza and whatever, even when, as you point out, they could be used for entirely different (and USEFUL) things.
Re: If a TV is on in an empty room, is it showing a picture?