Technology, like anything else that mankind creates, is a tool that can be used for good or for evil. It’s supposed to bring people together and make life easier—but it can also disconnect us from our real-life social networks.

Question: You have over two million Twitter followers. How do you weild this great power?

Rainn Wilson: Two million followers is quite an enormous responsibility.  Technology, like anything else that mankind creates is a tool and that tool can be used for good or for evil, like a light saber. Technology is supposed to bring people together, streamline things and make life easier and in a lot of ways it does that.  However, technology can also disconnect you from other people and break down the social network, the real social network of family and friends and interpersonal communication, and isolate people, make them feel alone, make them feel small. So it’s a tool that needs to be used correctly. I use two million Twitter followers as a tool.  The reason I have Twitter is so people can get to know me as a different person other than Dwight.  I just realized all of the sudden like everything thinks I'm Dwight.  They think that I'm Dwight from the office and that I'm this kind of annoying, difficult, nerdy, creepy guy and they don’t know Rainn Wilson—although I'm a little bit nerdy, annoying and creepy.  I'm not as much as Dwight Schrute. And it’s a way for them to get to know my sense of humor and my passion projects like Soul Pancake... So that is the purpose that it serves, but I don’t want Twitter to be a time suck.  I don’t want it to take me away from my family and from what is important.  It’s just a tool that I use.

Recorded November 11, 2010
Interviewed by David Hirschman

Directed & Produced by Jonathan Fowler