Om Malik

I don't think I had a role model. I just was very inspired by an article which I read in Forbes magazine around the information superhighway and the Arpanet and stuff like that. To me, that intuitively made sense, and when I decided to come to the U.S., I knew exactly what I wanted to go and write about.

When it comes to the mobile web, the technology industry seems to be split between two camps - native apps and HTML5 web-based apps.

I think the emotional appeal of a platform is what works. I think the old-media entities still have not figured out that part of the game plan.

For a while, I have had this theory that we, as a society, are coming to the end of the mass production, industrial phase of the human race.

When I see Kickstarter, I don't see a company. Instead, I see a social movement. I see people doing things for people.

When I look at Kickstarter, I see small businesses that have been funded by their customers. I see the acceleration of this shift away from the industrial manufacturing ideology to more of a maker economy. And I also see an idea so powerful that the company name has become a verb.

Living a 24-hour news life has come at a personal cost. I still wake in middle of the night to check the stream to see if something is breaking, worrying whether I missed some news.

Why don't we face up to the fact that many of us in Silicon Valley are living lives that involve telling ourselves a lot of lies.

Most of the stress we feel here in Silicon Valley is self-inflicted.

Mindfulness is natural when you do not need to think about minor daily problems like making a living!

For me, stories are like Lego blocks. If I don't put one down, I can't put the next one down.

As an online journalist, newswire journalist, newspaper writer, I wrote every day. My whole thing was, 'I have to write and report and write every day.' That was my thing.

The funny thing is that I used to be a blogger, but it wasn't known as 'blogging' at that time. This was in the '99/2000 time frame.

Apps have become a preferred way of accessing information on mobile devices.

While in the early days of networks, growth was limited by slowness and cost at numerous points - expensive telephone connections, computers that crashed, browsers that didn't work - the rise of the smartphone has essentially changed all that.

Looking back, Google's success came from the fortuitous timing of being born at the cusp of the broadband age. But it also came about because of the new reality of the Internet: a lot of services were going to be algorithmic, and owning your own infrastructure would be a key advantage.

The battle between Google and Apple has shifted from devices, operating systems, and apps to a new, amorphous idea called 'contextual computing.' We have become data-spewing factories, and the only way to make sense of it all is through context.

Apple continues to make ever-thinner devices with a superlative build and a luxurious feel. What the company has achieved beneath the surface is worth even more praise.

If you're texting a friend about dinner, Google will give you restaurant reviews and directions automatically.

Sure, Google's and Apple's ecosystems look a little different, but they are meant to do pretty much the same thing. For the two companies, innovation on mobile essentially means catching up to the other's growing list of features.

We are splintering what was the 'camera' and its functionality - lens, sensors, and processing - into distinct parts, but, instead of lenses and shutters, software and algorithms are becoming the driving force.

In a way, digital cameras were like very early personal computers such as the Commodore 64 - clunky and able to do only a few things.

Echoes of the iPhone are everywhere. Xiaomi's phones and Google's new Pixel are designed to fool you into thinking that they just might be an iPhone.

Compared to Apple, Internet companies like Google and Facebook don't have strong perspectives on the way they want the world to work.

Because Apple's corporate DNA is that of a hardware company, its activities are meant to support hardware sales.

Some media companies that rely on advertising revenue are tying journalist compensation to the traffic their story generates. It doesn't work because it de-prioritizes writing.

The lightbulb, the most humble and illuminating of all technologies, when combined with a network connection, transforms itself from being a bulb into a wake-up alarm, a mood alteration mechanism, and in some cases, a cupid's assistant.

Instead of standing in the way, technology is increasingly an enabler of emotion. A message at the wrong time at dinner can turn a gourmet dish into something insipid because of the interruption.

As someone who has been wrong often, I can tell you one thing for sure: hindsight reminds you of your follies every day.

In the digital realm, companies are free from the friction of producing physical goods, and as a result, we see companies like Google go from zero dollars in revenues to billions at a much faster rate.

Many companies that become verbs actually end up modifying our behaviors, and companies that modify behaviors end up becoming behemoths.

Avoid the spectacle of technology and instead focus on technology and science solving real problems.

The digitization of our society is a challenge that is both legislative and philosophical.

Technology is now part of the social fabric; it is what is causing dislocation. It is the cause of fear amongst all of us.

Internet, for all its faults, exposed me to a lot more music.

If you look at something like Spotify, many record labels are investors in the company. So from that standpoint, the money is all going back into the labels.

There is better than a good chance that while relaxing on a beach somewhere or sipping a martini in your favorite lounge, you have heard music that makes raise your eyebrow and ask, 'What kind of music is that?'

By now, we all know that our every move online can be tracked and traced, and that, ideally, services learn from and adapt to customers based on an artful deployment of that data.

Whether it is through stock-market trading or the sale of hotel rooms, the Internet has a way of bringing deflationary forces to all businesses that were hitherto inefficient and involved many middlemen.

My definition of media? 'Anything which owns attention.' This could be a game or, perhaps, a platform. Ironically, the media tends to associate media with publishing - digital or otherwise - which, in turn, is too narrow a way to consider not only the media but also the reality of the competitive landscape and media-focused innovation.

Snapchat works because using a selfie is way easier than texting or tweeting. Stories should adapt to the medium and do so without cheapening the story.

Everybody's trying to repeat the past with the new network, with new devices and new tools. Why not make something brand-new?

On my end, I am still surprised that many media organizations are unable to adapt to new media formats and, more importantly, new network behaviors.

There's only one way to succeed: Show up, work hard, and do everything right. Regardless of who you might be or what kind of job you may have.

Everybody has a different interpretation of immigration problems, and it's a highly personal experience. If anyone tells you there is a uniform solution to it, there isn't. As far as I'm concerned, it worked for me. And I don't know how to fix the problem.

The marriage of computing and connectivity without the shackles of being tethered to a location is one of the biggest disruptive forces of modern times.

In cities like New York, it is common to find taxicabs with wireless-enabled card readers.

Having followed the wireless industry long enough, I can tell you that building and supporting an application for different platforms is as tough as climbing a straight wall of rock.

In the touch-based mobile device era, folks need to think of ways to have a single technology stack married to the ability to create unique experiences for different devices.

Camera companies, like traditional phone manufacturers, dismissed the iPhone as a toy when it launched in 2007. Nokia thought that the iPhone used inferior technology; the camera makers thought that it took lousy pictures. Neither thought that they had anything to worry about.