By: Hillel Fuld (@hilzfuld)

Over the years of blogging, there have been a few defining moments. Not many, but each was pretty significant to me. The decision to leverage my personal blog to interview some of the most amazing people with whom I have connected was such a moment. People like Alyssa Milano, Guy Kawasaki, Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, and many more. See the full list here.

What all these people have in common is that they inspire me. They inspire me with their work and they inspire me to continue my work. Harry McCracken of Time Inc. is at the very top of the list. I have been reading Harry’s work for what-seems-like forever and I have always depended on him for his professional opinion and insights. Harry has written for Time, PC World, CNet, and more.

I think we connected personally through Google+ after having followed him on Twitter for years. Turns out Harry is not only a technology guru, he is also a pretty darn nice guy. Despite his insane schedule, and despite the challenge in answering these questions in great detail, he did in fact deliver and for that, I am grateful.

Thanks, Harry, and I hope my readers enjoy your answers as much as I did.

1: Who is Harry McCracken? Where did you come from both personally and professionally?

I grew up loving comic books and wanting to be a cartoonist. Somewhere along the way, that turned into an interest in journalism. I’ve always found comics, magazines, and the web to be basically similar: They all involve words, pictures and the relationship between the two.

Back in 1978, when the PC revolution was just starting, my father brought home a Radio Shack TRS-80; I was smitten. And except for a brief break during college, I’ve never been bored with personal technology for more than about ten minutes at a time ever since. It’s still unimaginable to me that I get to play with new products and write about them.

2: Let’s just jump right in. How do you think the web has affected traditional media and its chances of survival?

From a content standpoint. the web is by far the best thing ever to happen to media folk like myself: We can do more things, in more forms, more quickly than ever, and our connections to our readers are are far more direct. From a business standpoint, it’s trickier, since the models which worked wonderfully well in the print-centric days don’t transfer directly to the web, and the same people who were perfectly happy to pay for a magazine usually expect the same content to be free online.

You can choose to be either excited or depressed about all this–I choose to be excited, and am having a very good time in the brave new world.

3: What’s it like to be the man at a publication like Time? I follow you work closely and, as you know, am a big fan. Would love to hear how you view the work.

I have a good gig. In many ways, it hasn’t changed all that much from the days when Technologizer was a stand-alone site and I was my own boss: I still wake up and attempt to write stuff which people will care about, and spend a remarkably small amount of time dealing with the sort of beauracracy which you’d expect would be unavoidable at a big company like Time Inc. But there are also advantages to being associated with one of the very few media brands with 100 percent recognition. Every single day, I see evidence of just how powerful the TIME name is.

4: Lets talk tech. What phone do you use and why?

At the moment, I use an iPhone 5, and like it a lot. But in order to write about this stuff you need to use the most important products for real work, so I cycle between platforms. My next phone might be an Android or even–gasp!–a Windows Phone.

5: Do you think the mobile industry has reached some sort of a peak and Nokia, BlackBerry, and Microsoft have officially lost, or can they still make a difference?

Right now, it’s tough sledding for anyone who isn’t Apple or Samsung. But with technology, all leads over the competition are inherently fragile–even the ones which may look insumountable. Case in point: In December of 2006, even the smartest of pundits would never have successfully predicted what smartphone market share would look like three years in the future. That’s why I think it’s utterly possible that the most important mobile platform of 2016 might be one which doesn’t exist yet.

6: How do you use social media both personally and professionally? What role does it play in your life and which platforms do you like?

I don’t have any particularly strategy other than to have fun. I have the most fun on Twitter and Instagram, so that’s where I spend the majority of my time. But I’m also a Facebook fan and a Google+ dabbler, and enjoy experimenting with upstarts such as App.net.

7: What is Google in your opinion? A search, advertising, mobile, or social company? Please explain.

Oddly enough, Google’s official mission statement–“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”–remains a pretty good explanation of what the company is at its best. It makes its share of mistakes, goes off on tangents, and doesn’t always live up to its potential to be a force for good. But in the end, it’s made the world a far better place. I don’t have a big problem with the fact that as a revenue-generating enterprise it is, of course, almost entirely dependent on advertising. Maybe that’s because I’ve spent my career in journalism: I’ve always worked passionately to serve readers even though the businesses I’ve worked for, like Google, have paid most of their bills by selling ad space.

8: What are five of the biggest trends we can expect to see by 2014 in the tech space?

Among more-or-less mature categories, smartphones are the most important: In many ways, they’re already today’s PCs. Tablets are also a huge deal, and are particularly fun to cover because everyone agrees that they matter but it’s still not clear exactly where they’re going. As far as nascent categories go, wearables–from smartwatches to the Fitbit to Google Glass–are likely to explode over the next few years, as are other Internet-of-things areas such as Web-sabby home products like Nest and the August door lock. And I’m also looking forward to watching the way 3D printing will change everything–not just over the next few months or years, but over the coming decades.

9: What are your thoughts on Israeli innovation? Can there be another Silicon Valley?

Waze is the most recent high-profile example that a lot of really important work comes out of Israel–for the size of the country, it’s disproportionately innovative. Another example which leaps to mind is PrimeSense, the company which built some of the technology which Microsoft licensed for Kinect. As for the comparison with Silicon Valley–people have predicting the end of Silicon Valley’s unique influence for almost as long as there’s been a Silicon Valley. So far, though, it’s been pretty good at remaining relevant and reinventing itself.

10: Where do you see yourself professionally in five years?

At TIME! It’s a joy to work here and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of my job’s potential. TIME, of course, may look quite different in a half decade–I’d be amazed if it didn’t, and we have infinite potential to do exciting things–but I’ve learned that I’m lousy at making specific predictions about the future, and so I try to avoid doing so.