I've always felt that the human-centered approach to computer science leads to more interesting, more exotic, more wild, and more heroic adventures than the machine-supremacy approach, where information is the highest goal.

America's Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven't seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves - Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page, they wouldn't have been able to forget their former selves.

A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.

Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob setting. The problem with a lot of software designs is that they switch us to that setting.

There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it's extremely hard to block anything - extremely hard. You'll never get perfect blocking.

Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.

People spend hours constantly checking and tweeting and Facebooking. And it's cool to check up on your friends and see what's going on in the world, but it's not cool to spend five hours of your day on the computer looking at the Internet.

The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.