Separation anxiety is assuaged by constant connection. Young people announce every detail of their lives on services like Twitter not to show off, but to avoid the closed door at bedtime, the empty room, the screaming vacuum of an isolated mind.

I mean, you can't have advertising be the only official business of the information economy if the information economy is going to take over.

My parents were kind of like me in that they had tons and tons of weird, amazing stuff.

A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.

The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic,” the New York Times tech columnist once wrote. “Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease.

Why do people deserve a penny when they update their Facebook status? Because they'll spend some of it on you.

I would argue that among musicians who work in technology today, the level of technological sophistication probably exceeds that of military programs, to be blunt. They are just really smart people attracted to making strange new sounds.