Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

The information diet of a senior campaign staffer is insane. We were all addicted to our chosen email delivery devices and were aggressively tethered to them. It made sense and wasn't an issue during the campaign because of the importance of the situation. However, once the campaign was over and we were successful, the information flow dried up.

I have to experience the Nokia products. I'm a major contributor to the design and the quality of the devices. I have a lot of feedback to provide the teams on that. But also I have to carry competitive devices. You have to understand the competition.

By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size.

It's easy to blame technology for what we perceive to be a vast disconnect between people. We're so wrapped up in social media, texting, online dating - in many ways, we're addicted to our devices.

If we can't have the courage to tell our constituents, hey, we've got to cut back, then if we can point to something and say, I would like to vote for more benefits for you, but this balanced budget amendment or statutory spending cap or whatever the device is, is preventing me from doing it.

With 'The Social Network,' I got into it at first because frankly I thought there was a cool courtroom drama to be had with the intellectual properties. And then what further drew me in was that the most extraordinary social networking device ever created was created by the world's most antisocial person. I liked that story.

Computers and smart devices are among the greatest intellectual gifts ever created for man but, if not balanced with human contact, may offer little to develop one's heart.

I have sometimes thought the power of computers had exceeded our ability to use them, but Mr. Jobs and his team kept giving us devices that made indispensable things easier in ways you never thought of.

I grew up around electronic instruments. To me, the turntable is an electronic device. At the same time, I had access to drum machines and keyboards through my uncle; then track recorders into computers. At an early age, I was messing with computers more than most hip-hop musicians.

The future of television is not on television but online. A majority of us are turning to our computers and mobile devices for news and entertainment, Millennials especially.

A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.

How can we maximize the benefit of our nightly sleep? Turn off cell phones, computers, televisions, and any other distracting devices before bedtime to establish an atmosphere of calm and restfulness.

I detest computers. If you had a device like that 30 years ago that froze up constantly, misbehaved constantly, lost your information and screwed up when you needed it the most, it would have been laughable.

What's happened with society is that we have created these devices, computers, which already can register and process huge amounts of information, which is a significant fraction of the amount of information that human beings themselves, as a species, can process.

A wide variety of devices beyond personal computers are arriving, many of which will be used to browse the Web... The Flash engineering team has taken this on with a major overhaul of the mainstream Flash Player for a variety of devices.

Google has placed its faith in data, while Apple worships the power of design. This dichotomy made the two companies complementary. Apple would ship the phones and computers, while Google would provide Maps, Search, YouTube, and other web tools that made the devices more useful.

All of a sudden, if you think about the entire ecosystem of connected devices that can pull down information, access content and allow me to share and work and communicate, the vast majority now are not Windows computers. They are iPhones. They are iPads. They are Android devices.

One of the instruments that really stuck out to me was the talking drum, which is basically the first type of communication device. It's a drum you put on your shoulder, and you can pitch it with your arm, and you can 'talk' with it.

When I directed the 'Ring' cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York recently, there were people texting all through the show. But theatre isn't a communication device: it's a communion.

The technology, called near-field communication, involves a microchip that can send and receive data across very short distances, about four inches. Instead of swiping a credit card, you hold your phone near a reader and let the data zip between the two devices.

Mobile devices, high-speed data communication, and online commerce are creating expectations that convenient, secure, real-time payment and banking capabilities should be available whenever and wherever they are needed.

My father had a big brick cell phone, before anyone had a cell phone, because he was really just into that kind of thing - communication devices. I grew up between my father's laboratory and my mother's library.

Microsoft is committed to the ubiquity of the Skype experience - communication across every device and every platform will remain a primary focus.