Technological revolutions are very hard to predict. My favourite example is someone in 1850 taking care of horses as a farrier. They would have said, "Look, horses have been part of human existence for 5,000 years. We are horse people. It's permanent." But all of a sudden, the internal combustion engine comes along and, with it, oil fields and automobiles, which basically replace the horse completely. So we often have these long periods of stability and then a sudden inflection point.

Human entertainment will have moved on to something new. Then the ultimate challenge for us is, can we figure out what that new form of entertainment is?

Something will eventually replace the Internet. But it's hard to know what and when it will happen.

When you grow up, as I have, in the shadow of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others, success is defined as the total global transformation of a market. To achieve that, you need low prices and an attractive offering. It's about trying to make a positive impact on a big scale.

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte... ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual's taste.

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

Don’t get distracted by the shiny object [and if a crisis comes], execute on the fundamentals.