No matter how hard we strive for objectivity, writers are biased toward tension - those moments in which character is forged and revealed.

I think the idealism has always been marketing. Even back in the early days of Apple and the 'pirate' mentality, they were building a computer that they wanted to differentiate from IBM and Microsoft.

For decades, technology entrepreneurship has been revered, and people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk were heroes.

The one thing that Airbnb had was, Brian and Joe were designers, and they did a great job. They also had Nate Blecharczyk, who was the CTO, who I describe his history as a high schooler and at Harvard as really a creator of tools for spammers.

When you build a product, you make a lot of assumptions about the state of the art of technology, the best business practices, and potential customer usage/behavior.

Personally, I don't think the film and television industries are run as well as they used to be. Oh sure, we've got great digital effects now but... where are the visionaries?

We could talk, act, and dress funny. We were excused for socially inappropriate behavior: 'Oh, he's a programmer'. It was all because we knew this technology stuff that other people found completely mystifying.

I attend Internet conferences all the time, and they literally make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.