Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin interviewed Twitter and Square cofounder Jack Dorsey last night at the Bluxome Street Winery in San Francisco.
Dorsey said that great technology "gets out of the way completely." Pontin pressed him for an example.
"San Francisco does a great job of timing lights," Dorsey said, pointing to thoroughfares like Fell Street where the lights stay green. "When it works, it gets out of the way. When it goes down, you start thinking about the failures of technology."
That's a lot of weight to put on a red light. And these feelings might explain why Dorsey, despite being a billionaire, sometimes just rides the bus to work and reads a book.
Dorsey has a longstanding interest in how urban areas function, Pontin noted—an interest which helped shape his thinking about Twitter as a force for coordinating actions of large groups of people.