Communication always changes society, and society was always organized around communication channels. Two hundred years ago it was mostly rivers. It was sea-lanes and mountain passes. The Internet is another form of communication and commerce. And society organizes around the channels.

Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology.

For electric power generation, we are very optimistic about solar-thermal technology, and we’re intrigued by the potential of enhanced geothermal energy to replace coal-based power generation. Traditional carbon capture and sequestration-based coal power generation is somewhat unlikely to be competitive.

I generally disagree with most of the very high margin opportunities. Why? Because it's a business strategy tradeoff: the lower the margin you take, the faster you grow.

Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.

I've probably failed more often than anybody else in Silicon Valley. Those don't matter. I don't remember the failures. You remember the big successes.

There's no doubt in my mind over the next 25 years how we drive, how we build our houses, how we fly, how we build our buildings, will all change.