“I took computers in high school. I would do all my own programming, bu...” — Craig Hatkoff Quote

I took computers in high school. I would do all my own programming, but I didn't see the future of computers for anything other than data processing. Who was going to use a computer for communications?

Whether we're talking about books, music or film, it's all about storytelling. You get a powerful new way of connecting with people once you hear their stories.

In December of 2001, after September 11th, my wife, Jane Rosenthal, and Robert DeNiro asked me if I would help them create the Tribeca Film Festival. The idea was to revitalize lower Manhattan. We would show films on piers, in high schools. It was all about the community. We wanted it to be accessible to everybody.

Disruption is in my genes. My father owned one of the first discount toy stores, Duane's Toyland, in Albany and Schenectady, near where I grew up. Discount was always a huge disruptor - it disrupted Sears Roebuck.

When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.

The computers people have are no longer on their desks but in their hands, and that is probably the transformative feature of the technology. These computers are with you, in the world.

I always have traveled with a camera throughout my life, but I always had my old 35mm film camera. When I was training to go into space, the only equipment there was a digital camera. I went through a fast-track class on Earth. It actually was fun, though I'm basically a dinosaur with computers.

Computers are wasteful of paper and time. Once, we'd get documents with a few errors. Now, people make hundreds of copies until each sheet is flawless and memos are duplicated endlessly. Managers get swamped with emails.