In the early IBM team, that was a racially diverse team, a gender-diverse team.

Flipping our classrooms into active learning spaces really is important and having these convenient spaces where people feel comfortable.

I went to an inner-city school in Buffalo. We had no money. But our teachers believed in hands-on active learning - there was a mandatory science fair, which was critical.

There's this fabulous innovation ship called Unreasonable at Sea, where I'm a mentor. One of the companies there was called Protei, and they're an open hardware ocean exploration and monitoring idea.

Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.

It's like how science fiction in the '50s was a way of talking about war without actually having to risk any political capital. The obvious metaphor is power and powerlessness, but I also think it's a way of experimenting with dangerous feelings in a safe arena and trying things out.

Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof - of which history offers so many examples - that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science.

What we look for are people that are technically competent. You need a background in a scientific field, whether it's as a scientist, an engineer, medical doctor, or, you know, a person that's in the military with some kind of technical background.