People are seduced by signals from the world, but that is manipulation, not reality. Computers have learned more about us than we've learned about them.

I don't want to sound like some old person pining for how things used to be, because I'm not. But walking down the street, for example, used to be a public activity; you'd see the other people.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of us, a vast majority of the time, we surrender our true autonomy to this illusion of agency. I'm as guilty as anybody, and I write about it in a book. I'm not condemning anybody.

The iPad - contrary to the way most people thought about it - is not a tablet computer running the Apple operating system. It's more like a very big iPhone, running the iPhone operating system.

The competitive advantage professional journalism enjoys over the free is just that: professional journalists, whose paid positions give them the time and resources they need to commit more fully to the task. If we can't do better, so be it.

The early cyberpunk idea was that networked computers would let us do our work at home, as freelancers, and then transact directly with peers over networks. Digital technology would create tremendous slack, allow us to apply its asynchronous, decentralized qualities to our own work and lives.

I feel like the smartest people in my field are busy reinforcing the old models with new technology.