My real bottom-line hypothesis is that nobody has a sweet clue what they’re doing. Therefore you better be trying stuff at an insanely rapid pace. You want to be screwing around with nearly everything. Relentless experimentation was probably important in the 1970s-now it’s do or die.

Don't let the vision be shot through with holes, but be damn sure some of your best and brightest are shooting at it -- with bazookas as well as sniper's rifles.

The race will go to the curious, the slightly mad, and those with an un-satiated passion for learning and dare-deviltry.

You can't think your way out of a box; you've got to act.

I am confident that for the foreseeable future (barring some catastrophic event affecting economic, energy, electrical, and communications systems), many subpopulations that use information intensively (e.g., students, academics, library patrons, white collar workers) will be using some sort of portal information appliance.

Many flagship state universities have wonderful digital libraries that are accessed by people around the world. In future, if not current, budget crises, trustees, board members, and administrators may wonder why these state institutions - with an articulated primary clientele of students, faculty, and staff members and a secondary clientele of all citizens of the state - should be spending resources on a digital library that is used by many people beyond the primary and secondary service populations.

A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.