In my first company, Seer Technologies, where I was chief technology officer, we shied away from the media. We watched every word and were guarded in front of journalists.
When I became CEO, I was really worried that we were in commoditized segments that were mature and no longer growing. So we made a radical pivot into health technology because that is one of the world's unmet needs.
Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time - so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?
Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.
Everyone in the semiconductor industry, everyone in the technology industry, would benefit from more diversity in the business.
Some Google employees have their self-driving vehicles take them to work. These car robots don't look like something from 'The Jetsons'; the driverless features on these cars are a bunch of sensors, wires, and software. This technology 'works.'
Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall. That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet.
I make short films, little documentaries, about the co-evolution of humans and technology.
Yet now we are faced with the sickening suspicion that technology has run ahead of us.
We are living, we have long been told, in the Information Age. Yet now we are faced with the sickening suspicion that technology has run ahead of us.
If your strategy calls for you to be in America, then you will go into America. If your strategy calls for you to be in M&A, then you'll do an acquisition. You usually acquire a company to acquire technology, geographic advantage, etc. Similarly, geographic expansion is very much like M&A. It's done to advance a strategy.
I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.
I think that technology is the best thing that ever happened to mankind. It's an absurd notion that somehow, 'My God, what are we going to do when driverless cars come along?' It's going to save lives on the road. And maybe, one day, we'll all be working four days a week and not five or six days a week.
During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.
I'm thankful God has given us the technology where we can see each other through Skype on the computer. It's not the same thing, but at least we can see each other. Imagine the time before when that wasn't available and people had to go defend our country. It's really hard. I go two weeks without seeing my family and I go crazy.
Despite our ever-connective technology, neither Skype nor Facebook - not even a telephone call - can come close to the joy of being with loved ones in person.
We are in an age of technology where we sit in our little cubicles and we IM each other and Skype each other and never connect as human beings.
I have taught history on the high school and college levels, and am or have been a lecturer at the Smithsonian, The National Institutes of Health, and numerous colleges and universities, mostly on science fiction and technology subjects.
People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of 'Wired' magazine. Then things began to change. In the early '80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.
The smug complacency of technology adverts disguises a pretty mixed picture, with too many people not connected, too many passive users of technologies designed for interactive, and far too much talk about empowerment but far too little action to make it happen.
