The future is unwritten. there are best case scenarios. There are worst-case scenarios. both of them are great fun to write about if you' re a science fiction novelist, but neither of them ever happens in the real world. What happens in the real world is always a sideways-case scenario. World-changing marvels to us, are only wallpaper to our children.

The internet brought many laudable things, but prosperity, stability, accountability and honest politics were not four of them.

Worrying about a large institution, especially when it has computers, is like worrying about a large gorilla, especially when it's on fire.

The future is a process, not a destination. Richard Stallman is a guy my age. I sympathize with Richard rather more than I sympathize with Richard's open-source ideas, but the guy's a mortal human being and so is his social movement. Open-source is a means of production.

"Story-tellers" should listen seriously to design and architecture without getting all literary and imperial about that. Hackers are arrogant geek romantics. They lack the attentive spirit of inquiry.

You don't get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.

Every passing year brings us more past futures.