I actually love technology. I worked for 18 years as systems analyst in technology.

A life where bots tell us what to do every second - get up, go to work, do this, have kids with this person - is completely reasonable. Bots determine our economic opportunities; We have already accepted that. All the decision making would be done by bots and we wouldn't even notice.

I think if I were to express my wish, it would be that we are more regionally self-reliant. And I dont mean people being survivalists, I mean regionally self-reliant. So that you have these individual cells. The idea of having different solutions in different areas, so that we have a very robust, durable civilization.

I have an English literature degree. I wanted to be the next great American novelist from a very early age, but I put it aside for a while, because I got very realistic at one point.

Silicon Valley isn't usually where aspiring authors go to kick-start a literary reputation. [...] How'd he do it? By courting bloggers and influential techies like Joi Ito, Stewart Brand, and Craig Newmark demonstrating that if you can get the geek grapevine on your side, you don't need Random House.

When the survival strategy of a civilization is invalidated, in all of human history none have ever turned back from the brink.

For average working folks, America was becoming a puzzle. Who was buying all these two-hundred-dollar copper saucepans, anyway? And how was everyone paying for these BMWs? Were people shrewd or just stupefyingly irresponsible?