As a society, I think we express our cultural mores through our politics. We're trying constantly to figure out what's OK and what's not OK. And it's hard, because our society is constantly buffeted by gale force winds of technology. Things are always changing.

Change creates fear, and technology creates change. Sadly, most people don't behave very well when they are afraid.

Right now, we have the most complex relationship with technology that we've ever had. Your regular person has more technology in their life now than the whole world had 100 years ago.

Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study - you can get a degree in robotics - and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people's minds.

These days the technology can solve our problems and then some. Solutions may not only erase physical or mental deficits but leave patients better off than able-bodied folks. The person who has a disability today may have a superability tomorrow.

The goal for many amputees is no longer to reach a 'natural' level of ability but to exceed it, using whatever cutting-edge technology is available. As this new generation sees it, our tools are evolving faster than the human body, so why obey the limits of mere nature?

The dissemination of advanced implantable technology will likely be just as ruthlessly democratic as the ailments it is destined to treat. Meaning that, someday soon, we may have a new class of very smart, very fast people - yesterday's disabled and elderly.

Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it - often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes.

I absolutely believe that a lot of the issues raised in 'Amped' about technology migrating into our bodies are issues that we're really going to deal with soon.

In my books the technology that I choose to talk about has to serve the themes. What that means is that I end up having to cut out a lot of cool technology that would be really fun to describe and play with, but which would just confuse everybody. So in 'Amped,' I focus on neural implants.