Digiphrenia”—the way our media and technologies encourage us to be in more than one place at the same time.

What makes a great standalone piece of hardware is not the same thing as what makes a great networking device. One can work as an essentially closed system. The other is absolutely dependent on its openness.

Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.

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.

We are looking at a society increasingly dependent on machines, yet decreasingly capable of making or even using them effectively.

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.

Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs.