The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans.

Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.

We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene.

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.

I think, at the end of the century we'll have a generation of parents and a generation of children who won't have had the deep satisfactions of being parents and being children in the way that they might have and are going to spend a lot of time fretting and worrying and being hovered over for nothing. The question isn't so much "What will happen in the long run?" but "What's happening to people's lives right now?"

The more obsessively we focus on what a particular food is going to do for us, the less healthy we've become. Simple pleasures become complicated.

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.