I'm happy to report that I have zero experience in the postgrad industry. While I'd love to spend most of my time working in pure theory and potentially influencing an entire field, I really don't think I'd be able to put up with some of the antics I've heard about. There is plenty of silliness that occurs in the corporate world, with the information silos and kingdom building, but at the end of the day money talks and bullshit walks - with little delay.

This problem is being worked on, and I'm pretty confident that the solution will be based on the principals of the semantic web. I have a feeling that academia will be pretty late to the party when it comes to implementation though, if half of the stories I've heard are true.