Growing up, I found I was good at two things: Art and Math. To hear my parents say it, though, it was only, 'John is good at Math.'

All artists yearn to struggle, when they struggle they know they’re alive.

No place in the US better exemplifies the ethos to engineer new digital technologies than Silicon Valley.

In the ’70s and ’80s there was an attempt in K-12 to teach science through art or art through science. The challenge today is how do you build the ethos of art and design into the academy of science.

I have a confession: I’m not a man of simplicity. I spent my entire early career making complex stuff. Lots of complex stuff.

I don’t like creating software anymore. It’s too exact. It’s like karate; there’s no room for error.

Artists change how we see the world – and that can have value in the way people do business.

I don’t really love computers.

I like stuff designed by dead people. The old designers. They always got it right because they didn’t have to grow up with computers. All of the people that made the spoon and the dishes and the vacuum cleaner didn’t have microprocessors and stuff. You could do a good design back then.

Things that I can do myself, I either do by myself, or teach a willing undergraduate who doesn’t know how to do those things by doing it for me. Things that I can’t do myself, my graduate students should be doing.