Refuse to accept the belief that your professional relevance, career success or financial security turns on the next update on the latest technology. Sometimes it's good to put the paddle down and just let the canoe glide.

No one doubts the enormity of the social challenges we face around the world but one critical element of our response must be the generation of new thinking and ideas. Yet creating the conditions that make this possible is not simple.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

The most potentially transformative impact of social media is its ability to encourage brands to marry profit and purpose. The reason brands participate is that such outreach earns those companies social currency enabling them to start or participate in conversations that connect them to consumers in meaningful ways.

America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances.

The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers who must be defeated. Instead, they are hungry for the Americans to step up and help them make their country safer, their government cleaner and their economy stronger. They are disappointed because the international community has done too little, not too much.

I support gay unions. I think the government should get out of the marriage business completely - leave marriages to the churches. And grant civil unions to gay couples, grant civil unions to a man and woman.