The problem I have with socialist utopias is there's some kind of committees trying to soften outcomes for people. I think that imposes models of outcomes for other people's lives. So in a spiritual sense there's some bit of libertarian in me. But the critical thing for me is moderation. And if you let that go far you do end up with a winner-take-all society that ultimately crushes everybody even worse.

One good test of whether an economy is humanistic or not is the plausibility of earning the ability to drop out of it for a while without incident or insult.

An economy where advertisers thrive while journalists and artists struggle, reflects the values of a society more interested in deception and manipulation than in truth and beauty

In the Sixties, the hippies said "Make love, not war," and that was naive. But it might be less naive to say "Make music, not war," in the sense that the people who create musical instruments are the same people who make up new weapons.

Eliminating wickedness is a different project from eliminating violence. Eliminating violence - the destruction associated with wickedness - is a practical program that I'm very willing to pursue.

I fear that we are beginning to design ourselves to suit digital models of us, and I worry about a leaching of empathy and humanity in that process.

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