Style used to be an interaction between the human soul and tools that were limiting. In the digital era, it will have to come from the soul alone.

What does it mean to not be alone? I've approached that question through music, technology, writing and other means.

My parents were kind of like me in that they had tons and tons of weird, amazing stuff.

Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.

Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.

My dad has sometimes felt that I grew up a little lacking in sufficient eccentricity - in the sense that I'm willing to live as an adult in a house with walls that are parallel to each other, that sort of thing.

After my mother's death, I had such difficulty relating to people.

The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena.

Advertising is the edge of what people know how to do and of human experience and it explains the latest ways progress has changed us to ourselves.