Mindfulness means being aware of how you're deploying your attention and making decisions about it, and not letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.

Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time.

Every big company has some little guy who is an enthusiast off in the corner working on technology. In Japan, it is integrated into their high-level strategy. They see it as a communication medium, because for them, just the words  -  and this is the problem that they have with Americans  -  just the words they say to you is not the complete message. Their facial expressions, their body language, there is a lot of context. Also, their written language doesn't translate to keyboards well.

Inexpensive phones and pay-as-you go services are already spreading mobile phone technology to many parts of that world that never had a wired infrastructure.

American families don't work. There is an illusion that they do.

My mission is to try to get a lot more global view.

There is sort of a continuing problem of putting a moral template on the future that is based on the morality of today.