The most effective young Facebook users, however -- the ones who will probably be winners if Facebook turns out to be a model of the future they will inhabit as adults -- are the ones who create successful online fictions about themselves.

If war stems from unmet needs related to male adolescent ritual, that's something that we need to examine. I'm interested in the possibility of simply getting rid of war. I'd be no more willing to let go of that than to let go of the possibility of eradicating cancer. That's not to say I'm certain we can, but I am willing to use any energy at all in the quest.

Software breaks before it bends, so it demands perfection in a universe that prefers statistics.

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

If anything, there's a reverse Moore's Law observable in software: As processors become faster and memory becomes cheaper, software becomes correspondingly slower and more bloated, using up all available resources.

Every time we give a musician the advice to give away the music and sell the T-shirt, we're saying, "Don't make your living in this more elevated way. Instead, reverse this social progress, and choose a more physical way to make a living." We're sending them to peasanthood, very much like the Maoists have.

We're losing track of the vastness of the potential for computer science. We really have to revive the beautiful intellectual joy of it, as opposed to the business potential.