Communication media enabled collective action on new scales, at new rates, among new groups of people, multiplied the power available to civilizations and enabled new forms of social interaction. The alphabet enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and revolution, the telephone enabled bureaucracy and globalization, the internet enabled virtual communities and electronic markets, the mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of info-nomads.

The areas of the brain that have to do with speech are very connected with the same parallel processors that have to do with the kind of ballistic calculations you need to hit small game with a rock.

Young voters are crucial. The trend over recent years has been for them to drift away. So anything that gets young voters interested in the electoral process not only has an immediate effect, but has an effect for years and years.

Communication media enabled collective action on new scales, at new rates, among new groups of people, multiplied the power available to civilizations and enabled new forms of social interaction. The alphabet enabled empire and monotheism, the printing press enabled science and revolution, the telephone enabled bureaucracy and globalization, the internet enabled virtual communities and electronic markets, the mobile telephone enabled smart mobs and tribes of info-nomads.

I think there are two aspects to smart environments. One is information embedded in places and things. The other is location awareness, so that devices we carry around know where we are. When you combine those two, you get a lot of possibilities.

It's quintessentially American to transform your family.

Humans are language machines, computers are language machines.