Men have become the tools of their tools.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those read more

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

Encryption...is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running read more

Encryption...is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running the government... It's hard to think of a more powerful, less dangerous tool for liberty.

If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.

If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

We are governed not by armies, but by ideas.

If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.

If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. read more

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a read more

Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it.