I think Google is the most successful attention merchant - profitable attention merchant in the history of the world, most successful advertising-only based company - most profitable. They started a very idealistic, beautiful company in many ways, but they didn't have a business model.

I think, by this point, almost everything on YouTube has some ad or another.

The breakup of Bell laid the foundation for every important communications revolution since the 1980s onward. There was no way of knowing that thirty years on we would have an Internet, handheld computers, and social networking, but it is hard to imagine their coming when they did, had the company that bured the answering machine remained intact.

Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash.

We have just decided we have to have everything for free. And I think we're starting to pay for it in terms of our mental states.

Hitler had this understanding that you speak to people's deepest, darkest emotions and give them voice that can be incredibly effective.

The blessing of the state, implicit or explicit, has been crucial to every twentieth-century information empire.