Part of the magic of economic growth is how you educate people, and the leading economies have to stay in front of that. From an economic point of view, it affects competitiveness and creates jobs. Or from a social justice point of view, you can take someone in the bottom tier of income and let him compete to be a doctor or lawyer. The education system is the only reason the dream of equal opportunity has a chance of being delivered - and we're not running a good education system.

The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.

There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

In my view, investing in public libraries is an investment in the nation's future.

Our teachers deserve better feedback.

I think Ebola is a great example of where the world really needs to come together. The three countries where this outbreak took place have had a lot of civil war, very weak health systems. And so, it did take a while for people to understand ....that eventually what we saw was a very unique Ebola epidemic. I think it is quite impressive what's being pulled together, and I think we will be able to get this under control.

The spread of online information isn't just good for charities. It's also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.