Forget artificial intelligence - in the brave new world of big data, it's artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.

For all the sophistication of a world in which most of our waking hours are spent consuming or interacting with media, we have scarcely advanced in our understanding of what attention means.

Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, we evolved to find certain things stimulating, and as very intelligent, civilized beings, we're enormously stimulated by problem solving and learning.

Mass literacy is a phenomenon of the past few centuries, and one that has reached the majority of the world's adult population only within the past 75 years.

With the rise of social media, it has given me an opportunity and a platform to have a voice as a blogger and as an activist, but it has also made me nervous that I might become a meme or a viral sensation, all without my consent.

To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That's what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games - nothing like saving the world.

I think people see the social media numbers, and the assumption is made that we're running a campaign that is just social media, but I think we're running a very old-school campaign.

If someone offered me a free trip to the International Space Station, I would decline. I like Earth. I like the internet. I like Diet Coke. I have cats. I write about brave people - I'm not one of them.