What gives you hope?
Spending time with activists, innovators, and entrepreneurs keeps me hopeful. Action in the world tends to fuel optimism, whereas the more detached we are the more we become pessimistic. For all the many flaws of social media, I also believe that digital technologies have the potential to expand our shared global intelligence. So, although I’m frustrated that so little progress has been made in using technologies in these ways, I’m hopeful that over the next decade or two this vital work will get underway.

How does change happen?
I wrote a very long book trying to answer this question. I concluded that change results from both a positive—strong new ideas combined with the power to act on them—and a negative—a weakening of the forces of conservatism that always block change—from interests, assumptions, and relationships. Generally, we overestimate how much can change in the short-run and underestimate how much can change in the long-run—partly because deep change requires a shift in minds and cultures.

If you could have a conversation with one person (dead or alive) who would it be?
I would love a conversation with Georg Hegel. It’s possible I might even understand him then!