A file-sharing service and a hedge fund are essentially the same things. In both cases, there's this idea that whoever has the biggest computer can analyze everyone else to their advantage and concentrate wealth and power. It's shrinking the overall economy. I think it's the mistake of our age.

There will always be humans, lots of them, who provide the data that makes the networked realization of any technology better and cheaper.

A fashionable idea in technical circles is that quantity not only turns into quality at some extreme of scale, but also does so according to principles we already understand. Some of my colleagues think a million, or perhaps a billion, fragmentary insults will eventually yield wisdom that surpasses that of any well-thought-out essay, so long as sophisticated secret statistical algorithms recombine the fragments. I disagree. A trope from the early days of computer science comes to mind: garbage in, garbage out.

Of all the things you can spend a lot of money on, the only things you expect to fail frequently are software and medicine.

The most important thing about a technology is how it changes people.

Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day.

Criticism is always easier than constructive solutions.