In Japanese organizations, before you have a meeting and you've got an idea that you want to get across, you go talk to everyone and list them. And then the meeting, you don't do it American style where everyone gets up and advocates and conflicts and decides, you get up and formalize agreements.

Back in the really early days, the men went out hunting, the women stayed home with the kids, and would hold the kid in one arm against the heart, so that's the left, and with the right arm they would throw. And it turns out you cannot make that calculation in real time. You have to have an algorithm set up. So these brain mechanisms evolved in order to do that, and when they evolved, the thing is that where there is a useful capability it often adapts to places it wasn't evolved for.

The audience is a big part of the show.

Active people to revitalize what is really the root of democracy: citizens communicating with each other. Democracy is not just about voting, it's about citizens talking with each other about the issues which concern them. We've lost a great deal of that in the age of the mass media.

We must take responsibility for educating ourselves. Being part of a 'smart mob' doesn't guarantee that you're a responsible participant or collaborator.

We know where the television is - everything has to be a sound bite; everything has to be an image; ideas are okay as long as they don't take more than four or five seconds to explain; candidates and issues are commodities that are sold like cans of soup; entertainment is limited to what a few people believe the lowest common denominator is; and you can't talk back to it.

In Japanese organizations, before you have a meeting and you've got an idea that you want to get across, you go talk to everyone and list them. And then the meeting, you don't do it American style where everyone gets up and advocates and conflicts and decides, you get up and formalize agreements.