“The security and privacy crises that have unfolded over the past week are the perfect moment for us to ask ourselves what public policy we should adopt not only to limit the government’s ability to mine data, but the ability of technological systems to store and process this data in the first place. We do not need to live in a society where photos can be silently taken by a pair of eyeglasses or conversations can be overheard by a stranger across the room. We don’t need to live in a world where government or commercial satellites might peer into our homes at any moment without request. These are still hypothetical advancements, but for how long?”

“Plan X is a program that is specifically working towards building the technology infrastructure that would allow cyber offense to move from the world we’re in today — where it’s a fine, handcrafted capability that requires exquisite authorities to do anything… to a future where cyber is a capability like other weapons,” Darpa director Arati Prabhakar told reporters last month. “A military operator can design and deploy a cyber effect, know what it’s going to accomplish… and take an appropriate level of action.” But you can’t expect the average officer to be able to understand the logical topology of a global network-of-networks. You can’t expect him to know whether its better to hook a rootkit into a machine’s kernel or its firmware. If cyberwar is going to be routine, Darpa believes, the digital battlefield has to be as easy to navigate as an iPhone. The attacks have to be as easy to launch as an Angry Bird.”

“In a recent conversation, she explained that wired and wireless connections, building blocks of modern life, are now essentially controlled by four companies. Comcast and Time Warner have a complete lock on broadband in the markets they control, covering some 50 million American homes, while Verizon and AT&T own 64 percent of cellphone service. Don’t get her started on the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger unless you have some time on your hands.”

“We know what Moore’s Law is and how it works, but not many people reflect on why it exists. Yes, there are often physical barriers to innovation. But there’s no imminent physical barrier to the realization of a bit: A bit is merely presence or absence of something, say a voltage, which means it can get exponentially smaller. So with no physical limitation, Moore’s Law reflects the top rate at which humans can innovate. If we could proceed faster, we would.”

“We’re committed to broadcast, but we need to be fairly compensated from people who redistribute our signal… The dual revenue system is essential,” Carey said. “We will pursue our legal rights and we want to be clear that if we can’t defend our rights, we will take our network and make it a subscription service… We’re not going to sit idly by and let someone steal our signal.”

“Something that is more appealing to consumers is offered that makes the older product obsolete. But this time, I am that older product. So I ask myself, will society as a whole be better off as a result? I know what the economics textbooks say, and I know what I have always told my students. But it is a lot easier to believe in a theory when it is about the world in general, rather than about your world in particular.”

“This is a revolution not unlike the early days of computing,” he said. “It is a transformation in the way computers are thought about.” Many others could find applications for D-Wave’s computers. Cancer researchers see a potential to move rapidly through vast amounts of genetic data. The technology could also be used to determine the behavior of proteins in the human genome, a bigger and tougher problem than sequencing the genome. Researchers at Google have worked with D-Wave on using quantum computers to recognize cars and landmarks, a critical step in managing self-driving vehicles.”