We need to build change in to our systems and let these systems evolve as circumstances change. Change is inevitable, but we need to do a better job of dealing with it, because when we start building huge gleaming monoliths, I think we start getting into trouble.

When you write a high-tech thriller, and then people in the defense establishment start calling you - people I can't name - you feel you've hit a nerve.

I'm against unanswerable concentrations of power, whether that be government or private industry or religious figures - anybody who is not accountable to the larger social climate or society for the power they wield, that concerns me. I'm very pro-democracy.

I think if I were to express my wish, it would be that we are more regionally self-reliant. And I don't mean people being survivalists, I mean regionally self-reliant. So that you have these individual cells. The idea of having different solutions in different areas, so that we have a very robust, durable civilization.

In the past, Google has used teams of humans to 'read' its street address images - in essence, to render images into actionable data. But using neural network technology, the company has trained computers to extract that data automatically - and with a level of accuracy that meets or beats human operators.

Businesses might have been helped by the ability to promote themselves on the Internet, but they have also been hit by the web's encouragement of time-wasting by their staff.

We're building what I call 'software apartheid.' We're in the process of creating a divided society: those who can use technology on one side, and those who can't on the other. And it happens to divide neatly along economic lines.

The popularity of the Internet and using it as an available resource has really changed the way chefs kind of gather information and look for inspiration. To me, a food trend is potentially a lot of people following an idea.