We paired this announcement of the R&D [commitment] with the so-called Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which is 27 [major investors] saying, "Hey, we'll put significant money into [energy innovations] when they're ready to spin out probably into startup companies."

The present and future of knowledge attainment and essential business skills.

Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.

People cannot become truly knowledgeable without being excellent readers.

Software is definitely engineering. It's different in that we take on novel tasks every time. It's not like building a certain bridge that is virtually identical to some previous bridge or some previous building.

If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there.

Convert bad news to good news.