Steven Levy

“If you're 19, you don't know what can't be done.”

“The iPhone was such a phenomenon that even the humble journalists chosen for an early look were thrust into a spotlight.”

“The vast majority of Americans perform sophisticated digital tasks on a daily basis. Grandmas and grandpas e-mail digital photos of their cruise trip and IM their kids in school. So a politician admitting that he or she can't bother to learn those things indicates a horse-and-buggy mentality.”

“Facebook takes it as a core truth that sharing and connecting is a force that will improve the world.”

“Since the iPhone, the most transformative products have not been gadgets but services. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have changed lives, but they didn't launch to massive fanfare.”

“Our chips keep getting faster, and our data rates keep climbing, but at the end of the day - or worse, by mid-afternoon - those power meters on our screens inevitably turn to red.”

“I am old enough to have grown up glued to a screen offering only three alternatives, each of which was an all-powerful national network that seemed permanently ensconced in the entertainment stratosphere.”

“As technology tries to maintain its dizzying ascent, one dead weight has kept its altitude in check: the battery.”

“Microtargeting, as its name implies, is a way to identify small but crucial groups of voters who might be won over to a given side, and which messages would do the trick.”

“Every year, I come to TED prepared to roll my eyes a lot at the beginning, but knowing that at some point in the intellectual marathon, my brain will buckle to the cascade of ideas and bend to the painstakingly rehearsed presentations.”

“Normally, my digital peregrinations take me to destinations like Facebook, YouTube, and boingboing.net.”

“Two thoughts occur to just about any parent whose child is about to enter college. The first is, 'I can't believe how quickly the years have gone by.' The second: 'I can't believe how much it costs.' As one of those parents, I did my best to get past the disturbing first thought and tried to calm my churning stomach while dealing with the second.”

“Is it possible for Apple or anyone else to rule in the mobile realm the way Microsoft did on the desktop? The way to do this is to go mass-market with a device that can do anything the others can do.”

“Google serves all of humanity with information within milliseconds.”

“Who wants to broadcast the news that he's bought a can of Sprite? And who wants to see that on a News Feed?”

“With the iPod - Apple's first successful stab at market dominance - Apple had begun with a high price but quickly dropped it.”

“Right after the keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Shuffle, I went backstage with one question in mind: What makes an iPod an iPod? By then - January 11, 2005 - I had staked my own claim to iPod expertise, having written a 'Newsweek' cover story about Apple's transformational music player, and I was writing a book on it.”

“To political technocrats, 2008 marks the maturation of 'microtargeting' - a technique that, if things are as close in November as expected, may well affect who takes the White House.”

“Inherently, Larry & Serge aren't paper-oriented - they're product oriented. If they have another 10 minutes, they want to make something better. They don't want to take 10 minutes to tell you something they did.- Terry Winograd”

“My favorite thing to do with my iPod was to shuffle my entire music collection and marvel at what songs came next. Sometimes the segues would be so perfect that it seemed a genius deejay was behind the wheel.”