What technology makes easy is not always what nurtures the human spirit.

The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesnt teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation.

People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of Wired magazine. [Then things began to change. In the early 80s,] we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.

Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely.

We ask [ of the computer ] not just about where we stand in nature, but about where we stand in the world of artefact. We search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become.

I think few people of education enter politics because it seems like a contact blood sport.