Critic

When designers replaced the command line interface with the graphical user interface, billions of people who are not programmers could make use of computer technology.

Any virtual community that works, works because people put in some time.

There is an elementary level of trust that is necessary for community. You have to be able to trust that your neighbors aren't going to look into your mailbox.

Technologies evolve in the strangest ways. Computers were created to calculate ballistics equations, and now we use them to create amusing illusions. Creating amusing illusions is a big business if you play it right.

By the time you get a job, you know how to behave in a meeting or how to write a simple memo.

On the Internet, it is assumed people are in business to sell out, not to build something they can pass along to their grandkids.

Soon the digital divide will not be between the haves and the have-nots. It will be between the know-hows and the non-know-hows.

It used to be that if your automobile broke, the teenager down the street with the wrench could fix it. Now you have to have sophisticated equipment that can deal with microchips. We're entering a world in which the complexity of the devices and the system of interconnecting devices is beyond our capability to easily understand.

Some digital natives are extraordinarily savvy.

The Orwellian vision was about state-sponsored surveillance. Now it's not just the state, it's your nosy neighbor, your ex-spouse and people who want to spam you.

Until fairly recently, Amish teachers would reprimand the student who raised his or her hand as being too individualistic. Calling attention to oneself, or being 'prideful,' is one of the cardinal Amish worries. Having your name or photo in the papers, even talking to the press, is almost a sin.

It's more important to me to get an e-mail that says, 'I saw your page and it changed my life,' than how many hits the page got.

I want to be very careful about judging and how much to generalize about the use of media being pathological. For some people, it's a temptation and a pathology; for others, it's a lifeline.

I think there are two aspects to smart environments. One is information embedded in places and things. The other is location awareness, so that devices we carry around know where we are. When you combine those two, you get a lot of possibilities.

Entire books are being written about the distractions of social media. I don't believe media compel distraction, but I think it's clear that they afford it.

Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping.

The idea that your spouse or your parents don't know where you are at all times may be part of the past. Is that good or bad? Will that make for better marriages or worse marriages? I don't know.

Young voters are crucial. The trend over recent years has been for them to drift away. So anything that gets young voters interested in the electoral process not only has an immediate effect, but has an effect for years and years.

You can't assume any place you go is private because the means of surveillance are becoming so affordable and so invisible.

Personal computers were created by some teenagers in garages because the, the wisdom of the computer industry was that people didn't want these little toys on their desk.