My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.

The interesting products out on the Internet today are not building new technologies. They're combining technologies. Instagram, for instance: Photos plus geolocation plus filters. Foursquare: restaurant reviews plus check-ins plus geo.

There's an entire universe in every single tweet, and it all really depends on the content as far as how it's going to spread.

It's a matter of invitations versus context. Twitter is really good at providing context, like, I'm having coffee at Third Rail Coffee.' Foursquare is about invitations to places. In this respect Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

Technology may create a condition, but the questions are what do we do about ourselves. We better understand ourselves pretty clearly and we better find ways to like ourselves.

Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.

Because of social media, we have a lot of personal essays floating around; you see them on Facebook: everyone's either reading them or writing them. Some of them are great; some of them are diary entries put forth as essays.