We've become more and more interrupt-driven. If you have six tasks to do in an hour, you can't just take 60 minutes and divide and have 10 minutes per task. You have 10 minutes per task minus the time required for context-shifting. That will be the next big challenge: figuring out how to fight the distraction-driven mode we're in and stay focused on one thing long enough to get it done.

Before the iPhone, cyberspace was something you went to your desk to visit. Now cyberspace is something you carry in your pocket.

People were touchingly naive at the dawn of the Internet revolution when they said the Internet will route around censorship the way it routes around damage. With any revolution, the establishment catches up and figures out how to screw it up. The answer is to keep technology advancing fast enough so that those who would try to control it can't. It's up to people to defend what they care about. We shouldn't be complacent that this stuff is going to be a force for good.

My driving style is alert. As a forecaster, I can't help but think about who else is on the road and how little attention they are paying to their driving.

The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaningful action in the present

As a global society we are performing a great experiment on ourselves. Half of the world population wants to race faster into the future. Go visit China and India. They're ready to go. And half of the world wants to drag us into the past. The problem is both sides have guns. I think there really is a reaction. A lot of people are saying enough is enough.

There is reason to be scared. Look at what has happened with fundamentalism - this is a reaction against modernity. It happens to be cloaked in religion, but these are people saying enough is enough. It's happened again and again through history. The good news is that modernism has always won.