Microsoft is a big intellectual roach motel. All the big minds go in, and they don't come out.

As Stewart Brand (co-founder of Emeryville's Global Business Network) likes to say, "Information lasts forever. Digital information lasts forever or for five years, whichever comes first." There are examples everywhere. The tapes from the original Viking landers that went to Mars are at (NASA's) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but there is no machine that can read the tapes.

I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, "There are two kinds of information in this world: that what you know and that what you know where to get." The tools help the latter, and that's what keeps us from going nuts. The sense of overload comes from the gap between that sudden jump in volume (of information) and the tools we have to make sense of it.

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.

It turns out it takes 30 years for a new idea to seep into the culture. Technology does not drive change. It is our collective response to the options and opportunities presented by technology that drives change.

We invent our technologies and then we turn around and use our technologies to reinvent ourselves as individuals, communities and cultures.

You don't want to rely on an expert to tell you what lies ahead.