I don't think that stability and the status quo go together at all, not in a flat world where people are integrated, where women are assuming new roles, where young people want to be consulted and participate. I think the trick is to open up, move down the path of reform, do it in a way that is consistent with your own society's stability and culture, and just don't think you can do nothing.

No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.

I think there are different kinds of elites. I think there are venal elites, and self-interested elites, and selfish elites, and I think there are visionary elites.

Never before in the history of the planet have so many people, on their own, had the ability to find so much information about so many things and about so many other people.

When you lose your job, the unemployment rate isn't four percent, it's 100 percent.

What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain.

I don't think the Arab Spring had much to do with energy. I think it was just the opposite, in fact. I think the Arab Spring happened because particularly young people knew they were living in a context where they could not realize their full potential, that they are being kept down by their own governments.