Years ago nobody was elected on the economic ticket. It was either the education platform or it was health or it was other issues. It is only recently that economic values have superceded every other human value.

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology which I look at as a global platform.

After graduating from flares and platforms in the early 1970s I started drama school wearing a pair of khaki dungarees with one of my Dad's Army shirts accessorised by a cat's basket doubling as a handbag. Very Lady Gaga.

With the never-ending stream of new social technologies apps and platforms rolling out every day its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change especially within large top-down hierarchical institutions a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.

The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions. You can argue yourself blue in the face and you're not going to change each other's minds. It's a waste of your time and my time.

The Republican platform specifically says we don't believe in bailing out private business and yet we did.

For the first time we're allowing developers who don't work at Facebook to develop applications just as if they were. That's a big deal because it means that all developers have a new way of doing business if they choose to take advantage of it. There are whole companies that are forming whose only product is a Facebook Platform application.

Of course all of the software I write runs on Linux that's the beauty of standards and of cross-platform code. I don't have to run your OS and you don't have to run mine and we can use the same applications anyway!

So as I look at transitioning to the communication platforms of the future I see that the beauty of Internet protocols is you get the separation of the layers between service and technology.

I believe I could have had a career in the music industry without 'X Factor ' but it was an amazing platform that propelled me to where I am now.

I know that books I have written will still resonate in 50 years - particularly 'My Sister's Keeper.' It has sold three million copies in the States alone. I strongly feel that as a novelist you have a platform and the ability to change people's minds.