Where I would fault President Bush the most was that, in the wake of 9/11, he motivated our military, but he didn't call the nation into a state of war. And he didn't explain that this would take though a communal effort against common foe.

When you think of what Americans accomplished, building these amazing cities and all the good it's done in the world, it's kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America, not just from abroad, but internally.

Think of me as the weathered sheriff coming back into Dodge 'cause the youngsters are shooting up the church and scaring the horses and not doing right by the women.

I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.

There is no law of physics that says just because we're connected, there has to be this schism between our physical lives and our digital lives.

In many parts of the world, being able to download information on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop in a few seconds is the norm. In Silicon Valley, wireless high-speed Internet connections are more ubiquitous than Starbucks.

The Internet and virtual reality make it easier for people to stay rooted in their communities and work for companies headquartered elsewhere. The Internet has also created countless small businesses, triggering the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Blip.tv is growing its audience by forming partnerships with traditional TV manufacturers and a new breed of company in the set-top box market that lets consumers connect to the Internet via their televisions.