I hate the new word processors that want to tell you, as you're typing, that you made a mistake. I have to turn off all that crap. It's like, shut up - I'm thinking now. I will worry about that sort of error later. I'm a human being. I can still read this, even though it's wrong. You stupid machine, the fact that you can't is irrelevant to me.

The human mind, as it turns out, is messy.

When knowledge passes into code, it changes state; like water turned to ice, it becomes a new thing, with new properties. We use it, but in a human sense, we no longer know it.

Productivity has always been the justification for the prepackaging of programming knowledge. But it is worth asking about the sort of productivity gains that come from the simplifications of click-and-drag.

It's possible to let technology absorb what we know and then re-express it in intricate mechanisms - parts and circuit boards and software objects - mechanisms we can use but do not understand in crucial ways. This not-knowing is fine while everything works as we expected.

I came of technical age with UNIX, where I learned with power-greedy pleasure that you could kill a system right out from under yourself with a single command.

UNIX always presumes you know what you're doing. You're the human being, after all, and it is a mere operating system.

The ability to 'multitask,' to switch rapidly among many competing focuses of attention, has become the hallmark of a successful citizen of the 21st century.

Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system.

Multitasking, throughput, efficiency - these are excellent machine concepts, useful in the design of computer systems. But are they principles that nurture human thought and imagination?

Internet voting is surely coming. Though online ballots cannot be made secure, though the problems of voter authentication and privacy will remain unsolvable, I suspect we'll go ahead and do it anyway.

After we have put our intimate secrets and credit card numbers online, what can prevent us from putting our elections there as well?

The act of voting, to put it in computing terms, is a question of user interface.

Y2K is showing everyone what technical people have been dealing with for years: the complex, muddled, bug-bitten systems we all depend on, and their nasty tendency toward the occasional disaster.

Y2K has challenged a belief in digital technology that has been almost religious.

Computer systems could not work without standards - an agreement among programs and systems about how they will exchange information.

Watching a program run is not as revealing as reading its code.

Technology does not run backward. Once a technical capability is out there, it is out there for good.

Programmers seem to be changing the world. It would be a relief, for them and for all of us, if they knew something about it.

'I am not adopted; I have mysterious origins.' I have said that sentence many times in the course of my life as an adopted person.

I like mysteries.

Writing was a way to get away from my life as a programmer, so I wanted to write about other things, but of course nobody wanted to publish another story about a family, unless it was extraordinary. When I began writing about my life as a programmer, however, people were interested.

So many people for so many years have promoted technology as the answer to everything. The economy wasn't growing: technology. Poor people: technology. Illness: technology. As if, somehow, technology in and of itself would be a solution. Yet machine values are not always human values.

There's some intimacy in reading, some thoughtfulness that doesn't exist in machine experiences.

I don't like the idea that Facebook controls how people express themselves and changes it periodically according to whatever algorithms they use to figure out what they should do or the whim of some programmer or some CEO. That bothers me a great deal.

I think technical people now should learn literature, because literature teaches you a great deal about how - the depths and variety of human imagination.

I feel the best villains are the ones you have feelings for.

I really don't like books when characters are just bad or just good.

I don't consider myself a Jewish writer.

I'm a dark thoughts writer.

I'm a pessimist. But I think I'd describe my pessimism as broken-hearted optimism.

I think that focusing all experiences through the lens of the Internet is an example of not being able to see history through the eyes of others, to be so enamored of one's present time that one cannot see that the world was once elsewise and was not about you.

Has Google appropriated the word 'search?' If so, I find it sad. Search is a deep human yearning, an ancient trope in the recorded history of human life.

The biggest problem is that people have stopped being critical about the role of the computer in their lives. These machines went from being feared as Big Brother surrogates to being thought of as metaphors for liberty and individual freedom.

I'm obsessed with the countryside: woods, forests, fields, lakes, mountains. I'm really into folk music and folklore. But more so I'm into electronic music. I'm into bands that have both aspects, like Boards of Canada is a perfect example. You could listen to that type of music running through a woods. It's kind of what I wanted to achieve.

I guess I'm just quite observant and I pay attention to a lot of things. Human behavior really fascinates me.

'I Know You Care' is really personal and fragile for me. For me, it's about losing a family member and also about a breakup. It's about this idea of losing someone for good.

The only really safe thing to do is to write a diary of where you've been, what time you went to bed, what you ate. If I wrote honestly about everything I think it'd be a disaster. It would cause a lot of trouble.

I can fall in love in a simple way, but I can dissect it in such an intense fashion when it ends.

I think hype is a good thing. You need it and it'll teach you valuable things and you'll grow stronger, which is what I've done.

Two things I'm obsessed with are the countryside and fields and being in the open space and body parts, so you'll hear me mentioning body parts and human anatomy. I've listened to my songs and I think I am quite visual and I talk about bones and flesh a lot.

It's so important to take vitamins. People always get ill on tour because of the close proximity in the bus with everyone.

When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don't get me wrong - I can imitate singers. I can do bar mitzvahs and weddings.

I've watched and learnt from DJs and remixers and paid way more attention to how I want my voice to sound. Before, as long as it was loud and in tune it was fine. I've discovered the difference made by various microphones and effects, so each track has a different vocal sound, my voice is woven into everything and it's above everything.

After shows my face feels dirty with makeup and sweat, especially in the smaller venues, so it feels good to get back to the bus and smooth it away. Sometimes you need something alcohol-based, especially on tour when you don't always get a chance to keep washing your face all the time.

Maybe one day I'll make a record that's really mysterious and no one knows where it came from or what I wrote it about. But thus far, I've just wanted to explain everything properly.

I used to be obsessed with Pearl Jam, but I love having pink hair and kind of looking like a Barbie.

I've always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers - whether female singers or just like music from this country in general.

Apparently I'm introspective... levelheaded... but at the same time, absolutely insane.

There are plenty of bands who never get in the charts and it doesn't mean that they're not any good. Actually, a lot of the top ten is filled with stuff that just sounds the same. I could guess what's in there now - probably a bit of GaGa, Beyonce and some U.S. R&B males.