I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don't just think, 'Yes, my country is doing well,' but you think about the world at large.

I mean, if we said right now, there's somebody in the next room who's dying, let's all go save their life, you know, everybody would just get up immediately and go get involved in that.

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.

The only definition by which Americas best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.

So we can simulate Richter-10 earthquakes. We simulate 70-foot waves coming into these things. Very cool. We basically say no human should ever be required to do anything, because if you judge by Chernobyl and Fukushima, the human element is not on your side.

The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.

Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.