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.

Once you change the technology - from a film camera to a video camera, or from an 8-mm camera to 16 mm - you change completely the content. With 8 mm, a leaf on a tree will be made up of maybe four grains. So it's very impressionistic, almost like Seurat. If you switch to 16 mm, the technology gives you hundreds of grains on that leaf.

As a general rule, Las Vegas sports books take boxing bets only on major fights.The same is true of most Internet gaming sites. Within that framework, not only does boxing allow participants to bet on their own bouts, it sometimes encourages them to do so.

I spent all day in front of a digital screen, but I'm about to curl up with a book.

It's flattering that there are lots of Internet fan sites about me. I'm a bit of a technophobe and I don't even own a laptop, but it's probably a good thing I'm not logged on, checking up on what everyone is saying about me.