The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking.

I think that companies always become complacent, over time. Or most companies, that is.

The biggest mistake we see companies make when they first hit Twitter is to think about it as a channel to push out information.

Programming is how we talk to the machines that are increasingly woven into our lives. If you aren't a programmer, you're like one of the unlettered people of the Middle Ages who were told what to think by the literate priesthood. We had a Renaissance when more people could read and write; we'll have another one when everyone programs.

Think of how Wikipedia works, how Amazon harnesses user annotation on its site, the way photo-sharing sites like Flickr are bleeding out into other applications. We're entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected.

We're entering a new world in which data may be more important than software.