Biggest influence: my mother.

A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated?

People want to buy mp3s but can't? Piracy ensues. Then Apple strong-arms the music studios into the iTunes store and music piracy drops somewhat. The same, I believe, is also happening with ebooks.

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.

The problem with ebook filesharing is simply one of scale. But I think the "piracy" problem is massively over-rated.

One ape's hallucination is another ape's religious experience - it just depends on which one’s god module is overactive at the time.

The one thing that does happen, every time, though, is that I never get to write a book until I've already been thinking about it for a period of months to years.