And then you start getting into the technical side of it and the aesthetic side and with those areas you can come up with new ways to visualise things, new ways to render and use the computer to make things look different and new and stuff like that.

I have never had trouble with any actor being able to visualise things. They are amazing. As long as you have your monster head on a long stick, so you can hold it up there and you can wave it around and let them see it and explain it to them, they are just great.

And I also trust that there's more than one way to do something.

Yes, if I had it my way I would do all the shots myself - I used to do that when I was just a cameraman, an operator - but there's no way; you can't do that anymore.

Just going along with this, what I did, or what I do is I imagine not being myself seeing it, but imagine somebody else who's seeing it for the first time.

I just focus on one show, when this is over then I'll start looking at what is coming up.

And it's very hard to do this stuff too because there are so many effects movies being done, so many companies busy doing this work and the public just wants to see it. Good work is being done all over the world.

I'm always reaching for something we really haven't done, and War of the Worlds has a lot of this sort of documentary look to it and first-person camera view that is a new thing for me. I've done some stuff like that before, but nothing like the extent of this and digitally.

What you want to do is, you want to get away from people being afraid to show their work, which is the first thing, because they don't want to be shot down.

Steven and I have worked together a lot and I'm far ahead of the curve than most people in knowing what he wants, but he knows far more than I know about what's important for the story. So, most of the changes he will make will involve story changes.

So much of it is the design of the shot or the motion of the character; it's the work you do so that it has the same things that are in the movie. In just a few frames it's got to communicate something clearly and dramatically.

I think you've got to talk to the director, see the director's films and recognise that it's important that the work fits right in and see if as part of the movie.

I see the tool set being the same and maybe doing virtual movies and that's fine for some stories but not for others. And maybe make all CG movies but they are already doing it.

But you don't hire Ang Lee to do a typical children's movie. But it's such an interesting combination, whoever thought of getting Ang together with a comic book, that was just great.

Because you're telling a story, and I'm sure people fifty years ago would tell the same story differently if they were telling it to you today. Because the time is different. The film is the work of today's audience.

It's harder for me to work on a Forrest Gump kind of movie, where everything is invisible.

Everyone is trying to do something that hasn't been done and that's a really good thing. You can only do so much with a story and some scripts don't give you the opportunities and other scripts do give you the opportunities to do things that haven't been done before.

You know a lot of what worked on this was taken from Harry Potter 2, the little Doby character, we had a lot of our skin stuff worked out and that helped a lot. We have a lot of exchange happening.

To me the biggest breakthrough was when we did Terminator 2 that just opened the door for Jurassic and all of the others and that was as big as when we did motion control on Star Wars. But I don't see another big thing coming.

And then you start getting into the technical side of it and the aesthetic side and with those areas you can come up with new ways to visualise things, new ways to render and use the computer to make things look different and new and stuff like that.

Other times you can get showy for three minutes, and that's OK with certain films. But that isn't right with an Ang Lee movie, you have to fit right in. You have to understand Ang, respect him and be part of the team and not be in charge of it - he is in charge of it.

I've done enough of this that I can tell early on if it's going in the wrong direction or not.

I took business classes as a back up but I made movies all the time. I would get my classes done in two days and then spend the rest of the time making my movies.

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

I said, 'Okay, it's the year 2000, I'm getting a computer and a Palm Pilot.' I know how to check my e-mail, and I've listed some phone numbers on it. Half the time the battery has gone out so I can't use it.

To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life.

I've got a computer, but I won't go near it.

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.

All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?

In OK Computer, the guitar was already moving towards a tone generator as well as a riff generator.

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.

Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that.

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

I always say that my favorite game was Original Adventure, published by both Microsoft and Apple Computer back in 1980.

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.

It would be nice to design a real briefcase - you open it up and it's your computer but it also stores your books.

I am the farthest thing from a computer genius.

I wish I could have 25,000 years of my personal family history documented in a very powerful computer or a CD-ROM that I could just pop in and my computer would never crash.

The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.

In my second year in graduate school, I took a computer course and that was like lightening striking.

Some people may have noticed the new computer shelf at the anchor desk. Rather than phone calls, we want to take real time e-mails, and we'll be starting that very soon.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

The fact that biological, or "natural" rules might help in the creation of a computer generated work of art is interesting, but even a wonderful work of art made in this fashion isn't the same as a person, with all his or her experiences and emotions involved, making art.

Computer modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for climate forecasting, has reached its limits.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.

I have a son, Mason, who is disabled - cerebral palsy - and he does not walk independently, sit independently or speak. He uses a talking computer. I started becoming an advocate for him when he was 3 years old.

At the risk of being a fuddy-duddy I don't have a computer; I don't have e-mail; and I really don't need something in my house that I would be sitting in front of for hours.

A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.