I've always been interested in technology, but specifically how we can use machines to engage the imagination. I started using computers when I was young and was fascinated by creating rules and instructions that allow a computer to engage in a dialogue with humans. The stories found in the data all around us can do just that.
Millions of nerdy kids who grew up in the 1980s could only find the components they needed at local Radio Shacks, and the stores were like a lifeline to a better world where everybody understood computers.
Cable boxes are, almost without exception, awful. They're under-powered computers running very badly designed software. Their channel guides are slow, poorly laid out, and usually riddled with ads.
Economics pretends to be a science. Its practitioners fill blackboards with equations and clog computers with data. But it is really a faith, or more accurately a set of overlapping and squabbling faiths, each with its own doctrines.
I was around computers from birth; we had one of the first Macs, which came out shortly before I was born, and my dad ran a company that wrote computer operating systems. I don't think I have any particular technical skills; I just got a really large head start.
All of a sudden, if you think about the entire ecosystem of connected devices that can pull down information, access content and allow me to share and work and communicate, the vast majority now are not Windows computers. They are iPhones. They are iPads. They are Android devices.
As a kid, I was always into art at the same time as computers, and eventually I realised I was making more interesting stuff with my keyboard than with my hands. I really enjoyed modifying computer games more than playing them, so that got me into programming.
Computers may save time but they sure waste a lot of paper. About 98 percent of everything printed out by a computer is garbage that no one ever reads.
The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.
The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer.
I wouldn't call myself a geek, but I do sometimes teach Mommy and Daddy stuff about computers. And I do watch TV, but only informative programmes like the news and documentaries.
