Theme 1: Arts + Technology

"Men at thirty Have many rooms They could go back into happily And live in till they die." ... "The poem gets into me because I know I have to start closing doors but I don't like to be reminded, because it is very sad to think about closing the doors to such beautiful rooms — rooms that never really got a chance because there was always so much climbing to do."

Some people put too much faith in technology, they give over authorship to the machine and give up control of their own work.

You really must own your own ideology. Creation demands conviction.

The computer encourages understanding and control.

How many of you question the very basis, the fundamental systems, of logic and mathematics that drive computation?

Life is a journey and you have new information coming in all the time, and you often have to make radical changes in course and direction. And it's really important to be sensitive and intuitive to the things happening around you so you can pick up on those cues and change course when you need to.

What kind of presence do you want to have in the world?

There is this trade off. The more you document your own life, the more you check in, the more you tweet, the more you post photos of what you did last night. The more you do all this stuff ... In a way, you start to step out of those moments.

I love this feeling of slowly creating something that became more and more beautiful over time.

I really love to punch web designers in the face who refuse to learn html and css, because if I'm a letterer and can learn to do it myself in six months for a thing that's completely unrelated to my career, I just think it's lazy if you don't learn yourself.

It's fun to learn things that aren't helpful.

"You have to tell them what our value is because if you're not advocating constantly, if you're not constantly educating people, you're not changing the game."

"That desire to learn is really the only thing that you should have picked up from college."

"Learn the thing that you need to learn to make the things that you want to make."

That desire to learn is really the only thing that you should have picked up in college.

If you have a thing you wanna do, don't be lazy and wait.

If you want to make cool things you have to learn the tools it takes to make them.

You learn the tools that you need to learn to make the things that you want to make.

I think a lot of these infographics now are not very interesting because the underlying data itself is not very interesting. I think good infographics, good data design, has to begin with a secret or with an insight that you can deliver to people and that can only be revealed by the design of that data in a particular way.

Data has become the new pornography now.

It's really important to take steps back every now and then. Especially when you feel like you are getting caught up in a vortex and you are not making choices for yourself but just reacting to the way people act around you.

All we want to do is make the world more fun and pretty!

Curation was replacing Creation as the predominant mode of self expression.

it's just so liberating to be able to make anything that you want to make.

I started to feel like [...] a prisoner of self documentation.

Anyone with access to the internet has access to a wider audience than ever before.

Music is at the center of everything I do.

Your creative imagination will always be greater than the technology at your disposal.

If you have a thing that you want to do ... just grab the reins and fuckin' do it.

Failure is absolutely required.

Games work. People get involved with them and they start playing.

You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.

I see collaboration as a really important tool. It's really at the center of bringing together arts and technology.

It's up to us what we build.

I actually believe that design can change the world.

The magic doesn't live in your computer or your keyboard. It lives in your ability to manipulate the tools that you have at your disposal to reach what you're imagining in your mind.

There's really only one magic happening between arts and technology, and that magic is design.

As designers, as developers, as creatives, we are problem solvers.

If you love your own product, there's a good chance others will too.

How does the computer change the way we conceive of architecture?

Be makers of things, not just consumers of things, because our future depends on it.

It's the invitation that someone is out there listening that makes us want to share.