"A Journey on the Information Highway"

But the amazing thing was when I was reading that book, I just had this epiphany. And I realized, years of experience and knowledge had gone into this little device in my hand, and I could read that in a few hours and gain the benefits of that experience and knowledge. And I thought, “That’s incredibly powerful. Why aren’t people reading books all ... See more

Here's the formula if you want to build $1 billion Internet company because I know that's what people come to XOXO to learn. It's simply this, identify a human desire, preferably one that's been around for a really long time. We often think the Internet enables people to do new things, but people just want to do the same things they've always done.... See more

I discovered a technology that could take me out of there (my small town) for periods of time. It was combination of a form of time travel and mind reading that allowed me to tap the knowledge and ideas of people who are much wiser than anyone I thought was around me and learn amazing things. Of course, this technology was books.

There is the potential and reality of amazing, positive, good things coming from the Internet even though it's driving force is convenience. Because humans don't only have mundane desires. They have amazing desires. They have desires to make art and music and funny card games. And they have desire to help people and to do science. And the Internet ... See more

But the convenience is only bad if we miss the point, if we miss that it’s about nourishment and freeing people up and doing better and better things, and if we only focus on the clicks and the connections and the retweets and the likes for the sake of more and more connections.

The Internet is still awesome. And after 20 years in cyberspace, today I think it is mundane because it's ubiquitous, but it's also powerful and now real unlike it was back then because it's ubiquitous. So let's go make it worthwhile.

So human desire of course doesn’t change that much over years or generations or millennia depending on how much you abstract, and people want the things they’ve always wanted. They want love and money and status and a sense of belonging, and they want to influence, and they want to get answers. They want to create, and they want solutions to their ... See more

I came to think about, why did this work, why was blogging important, why was this democratization of publishing important? And the way I described it at the time was, it's not about Blogger, about blogging. It's really about the realization of this great promise of the Internet, this idea that is about the democratization of knowledge, of ideas, e... See more

But there was one way I discovered growing up in that small town literally in the middle of the cornfields. I discovered a technology that could take me out of there for periods of time. It was combination of a form of time travel and mind reading that allowed me to tap the knowledge and ideas of people who are much wiser than anyone I thought was ... See more