Most surprising technologies

The best tech minds from America's best tech companies weigh in. Preview from Fortune's iMeme: The Thinkers of Tech conference.

Richard Barton
Richard Barton
Title: Chairman and CEO, Zillow.com
The early PC was revolutionary. It put unfathomable computing power in the hands of the little guy. It radically enhanced people's productivity and creativity, and changed the way they were entertained. It was a revolution. Then this device took a radical turn when it became connected to networks of others and it became the most important communication device in millions, now billions, of lives.

To me, the implications of PC moving from a productivity and entertainment device to being a communication and distribution platform were unexpected or perhaps un-appreciated. I am responding with my PC to an email that you sent me right now. This email will be sent to you and then turned into the content of an article or a blog post that gets distributed over the network to potentially millions of people.

I now spend the majority of my working life "doing email." When I started my business career, there was no email. Email is a revolution in and of itself and it is just one of the many emerging uses of the PC as a communications device for digital "society."

Richard Barton

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Eva Chen

John Clippinger

Esther Dyson

Steve Fambro

Louise Guay

Bill Joy

Mark Lewis

Yusuf Mehdi

Harriet Pearson

Tomaso Poggio

Geordie Rose

Jonathan Schwartz

Sol Trujillo

Padmasree Warrior

Lee Thorn

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.