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The point is that these decisions they've made are partly for your convenience and partly for theirs and partly out of stereotypes that they carry with them from the conventions of the computer field.

In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.

Whatever way that we have in our head that we expect people to use a software, they'll find other interesting ways to use it that we didn't expect.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

I think there's a great homogenizing force that software imposes on people and limits the way they think about what's possible on the computer. Of course, it's also a great liberating force that makes possible, you know, publishing and so forth, and standards, and so on.

Programmers work in bursts of productivity. Then, they let the brain rest and get back into it. A lot about the office world is not a great fit for me.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

For all their expertise at figuring out how things work, technical people are often painfully aware how much of human behavior is a mystery. People do things for unfathomable reasons. They are opaque even to themselves.

When you work for somebody who is very technical, and understands and has creative solutions to your problems, it spurs you along and stops you making excuses for things. And I found that very useful.

The people who work in intelligence work are more conscious, more apt to be attentive.