Digital technology is the solvent leaching the glue out of all of our traditional institutions.

I think of futurists as people who have a particular attitude about the future. They're advocates for a certain kind of outcome. As a forecaster I am something very different. I am a professional bystander. I have opinions about the future, of course. But my whole posture is to be detached and to identify what I think will happen and not allow my judgments of what should happen to get involved.

I'm actually an optimist about what lies ahead. Are wikis reliable? It depends on the specific business. Is Wikipedia reliable? You bet. Wikipedia is a researcher's dream.

Sometimes I think we're on this world for three reasons: to be useful, to tell each other stories and to collect stuff. It's the only explanation for eBay. We love to collect stuff, and at least if we're collecting stuff in cyberspace we're not deforesting the Sierra Nevada.

I think it is just a matter of time before we have literal ghosts in the machine so you can create an alter ego of yourself that learns from your social experiences and extends a life even if you're no longer in the game or you are no longer alive.

The best way to let people go is to let them know when they're hired that it's an uncertain environment and that their job is always at risk and even if you let them go, it's not that you don't love them.

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