If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.

All over the world today people have a very strong desire to find a sense of identity, and at the same time that's coupled with the rise of absolutely absurd wars that relate to ethnic identity. Perhaps there is something deeply ingrained in people that relates to a sense of belonging, and without that, identity doesn't seem as real as it should.

Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.

Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.

We have repeatedly demonstrated our species's bottomless ability to lower our standards to make information technology look good.

I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface.

If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.