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The big question society will have to answer is whether it wants computers thinking like humans.

Not only have computers changed the way we think, they've also discovered what makes humans think - or think we're thinking. At least enough to predict and even influence it.

In terms of the brain, you can in a crude way think of the human brain as a computer.

We have to come together, worldwide, and 'think.' We have a tool - the internet - to let us do that. Let's use it wisely.

One of the things that writing and speech can do is express what we're thinking one thought at a time.

Our computers double in capability on time scales of only a few years. It's hardly outrageous to believe that we will successfully develop thinking machines within a handful of decades, or at most a century or two. If that happens, these artificial sentients will quickly leave us behind.

There are thoughts we must not think.

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

In the information society, nobody thinks. We expect to banish paper, but we actually banish thought.

Our society, where we are right now, our minds are junkyards. We watch TV and sit on the computer all day and barely have an original thought.