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.

If we don't teach kids how to be alone, they will end up only lonely.

I love sharing photographs and websites, I'm for all of these things. I'm for Facebook. But to say that this is sociability? We begin to define things in terms of what technology enables and technology allows.

One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians--threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.

In the area of robotics and in the area of connectivity, technology is offering us things that we are vulnerable to - and we have to have a better response than a shrug.

What is the value of interactions that contain no understanding of us and that contribute nothing to a shared store of human meaning?

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.