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MARTINEZ: Compared to other periods in our history, people aren't rioting in the streets. Even the bickering in Washington, a lot of it feels tactical--there's not much that separates the two parties on economic policy or even foreign policy. I think from the perspective of a lot of foreigners it's kind of like Visa vs. MasterCard. It's not that different. So I think a lot of this is overwrought.

JOHNSON: The idea that we are moving into the "daily me" idea--in which you have [the world] tailored to your particular sensibility and you're not being exposed to new ideas--is wrong. And, in fact, there was a Pew study a while ago that [showed that] people who spent more time online had more exposure to differing worldviews than people who didn't spend time online. And [that's because] we assume that exposure to differing viewpoints makes us more tolerant of those viewpoints. I just don't necessarily think that's true. If you're somebody on the left, and you're forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh, [you don't say,] "Oh, he does have a couple of good points." No, you say, "This guy is out of his mind."

TIME: Let's get back to the question of how are we going to innovate in the future. Our teenagers can get online and help their favorite softwaremaker make the next version of that software. At what point do the consumer and the maker merge into one entity? And what difference will that make if it's going to happen?

JOHNSON: There's this category that a guy at M.I.T. came up with. He coined this phrase "lead users." It's not quite right to call them early adopters because they're even kind of a step beyond that. They're the 1% or 2% of your kind of core, devoted fans that are not just buying your technology first, but they're figuring out all of the things it can do that you never thought of doing. To be able to sort of reach out and talk to that core part of the audience generating new ideas--that's a really powerful idea.

TIME: So what's the point of a company's having a director of research?

JOHNSON: They can filter some of those ideas, and they can come up with their own. And they know a lot of the constraints of actually producing these things in a way that the lead users don't. What you want is both.

CUBAN: And the reality is, those [ideas] are evolutionary, not revolutionary. The [big ideas] are from the inside, not from the outside. Yahoo! was struggling to grow as a search engine, and then Overture came around with pay-per-click, and that saved the entire search industry. And that created enough revenue for Google to become Google. Every step of the way there's something that comes along that changes the game. And that's when the fun happens.

TIME: In your book, Steve, you argue that our popular culture--in the form of movies, television and, in particular, video games--is actually making us smarter. How does that work? And does that mean some people will get smarter faster but others will get left behind faster?