High Tech is not merely a technical matter.
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.
Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts.
Now it's hard to pick up any copy of 'Wired' that doesn't mention YouTube.
As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.
I think so much about how we read, about the nature of solitude, and of community, is changing in ways that none of us yet understand.
Our technology forces us to live mythically
People use guns but, in a sense, guns use people too. When we have the technology for violence easily at hand, our choices are skewed and we are more vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action.
In the future, IKEA will become an ever more spiritual sanctuary. In the future, your dream life will increasingly look like Google street view. Everyone will be feeling the same way as you, and there's some comfort to be found there.
My mom's a psychologist, and I think that has influenced me on a personal level. Plus, I'm just generally interested in visualization and humanity, social activity and technology, and what happens in aggregate.
I don't really find a problem with technology or television or anything. I'm a product of it. I grew up watching TV, and I don't think I'm too dumb or too crazy.
I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.
Laptop computers dramatically increased the time people spend doing work. (The internet dramatically decreased it, so we're even).
With 'Avatar,' you're beginning to see the need for less and less actors and less of an appreciation for live acting.
Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.
We are in love with youth culture in this country... It permeates every aspect of people's lives.
Largely because of television, instead of looking over into that spacious building, we are, in effect, living inside of it. That is your fate in this generation. You are living in that great and spacious building.
As the world becomes a more digital place, we cannot forget about the human connection.
Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.
I don't really have a writing process. I don't write at all but, honestly, I feel like it's a modern-day writing because everything is technology and if I go in there and freestyle and I keep it, I feel like I wrote that. If I go in there and fix it, it's almost like something I wrote.
I think the Internet and technology in general has changed everything. We can see it overseas even more with the Arab Spring and so forth.
If you think about the under-30 generation, the millennial generation - GenTech, as I call them - they grew up with a screen in front of them. And so they think about everyday processes, like payments, differently than you and I do.
If I had had a thing like an iPad when I was a kid, then I never would have gotten into the habit of writing things down by hand.
Facebook, Apple, Tinder, Snapchat, and Google create our social realities - how we make friends, how we get jobs, and how mankind interacts. And the truth is, women don't truly have a seat at the table.
I don't want the iPod to be my defining thing.
