I live on a canyon at the edge of San Mateo. We are fortunate to have lots of suburban wildlife as our neighbors, though I kind of wish the rattlesnakes would stop curling up by our back door.

The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.

This new economy that's just emerged has a new central economic actor. It's not the worker, the person who produces, nor the person who consumes, the purchaser. It's a new actor that does both things at the same time, call them a creator. They both create and consume in the same single act, and we're just beginning to see the shape of this new economy and it changes not just the economy itself, it's going to change the whole nature of the work relationship.

I think the most important thing that a company can do, not just in the customer space but the employee space, is to be completely open and completely honest. Don't pretend that you're doing something that you can not do. There's an old saying in Silicon Valley, "It's not a bug. It's a feature."

I live on a canyon at the edge of San Mateo. We are fortunate to have lots of suburban wildlife as our neighbors, though I kind of wish the rattlesnakes would stop curling up by our back door.

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.

I've actually tried not to call myself a futurist for the last 25 years. I prefer "forecaster," but people call me a futurist, and it doesn't really bother me.