Evgeny Morozov Quotes
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The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters.
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There is no doubt that the Internet brims with spamming, scamming and identity fraud. Having someone wipe out your hard drive or bank account has never been easier, and the tools for committing electronic mischief on your enemies are cheap and widely accessible.
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I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?'
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I think governments will increasingly be tempted to rely on Silicon Valley to solve problems like obesity or climate change because Silicon Valley runs the information infrastructure through which we consume information.
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Calling China's online censorship system a 'Great Firewall' is increasingly trendy, but misleading. All walls, being the creation of engineers, can be breached with the right tools.
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It's true that virtually all new technologies do trigger what sociologists would call 'moral panics,' that there are a lot of people who are concerned with the possible political and social consequences, and that this has been true throughout the ages.
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A faithful lifehacker would use technology to avoid dead time and move on to the entertaining, more gratifying activities as soon as possible.
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In part, slacktivism is what happens when the energy of otherwise dedicated activists is wasted on approaches that are less effective than the alternatives.
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The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom.
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As economic life relies more and more on the Internet, the potential for small bands of hackers to launch devastating attacks on the world economy is growing.
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In the past it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB ... used to torture in order to get this data.
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Many of us were a little to early to assume that the most logical uses of the internet in authoritarian states would be to empower people. And to force them towards participation in politics. If you look at most authoritarian states, they are very grim places to live in. The only good thing about it is fast internet. That's the only way you can find some meaning in an otherwise very dark and gloomy life.
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Dictators aren't stupid, or regimes could be toppled easily by young people mobilizing on Facebook.
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Once a term like "open source" entered our vocabulary, one could recast the whole public policy calculus in very different terms, so that instead of discussing the public interest, we are discussing the interests of individual software developers, while claiming that this is a discussion about "innovation" and "progress," not "accountability" or "security."
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In addition to their 'do no evil' motto, Googlers have always been guided by another, much less explicit philosophy: 'computational arrogance.'
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When we can commit a crime, we can also trigger debate. Cases go to courts. Media start covering the cases. But once you build smart environments where, if you meet a certain probabilistic profile, you won't even be allowed to board a bus, let alone commit a crime, we're perpetuating existing laws so they face no challenges or revision.
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In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to.
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There is this group of people who love innovation. Those people want to innovate, and they think the Internet is a wonderful tool for innovation, which is true. But you also have to remember that much of that innovation is constrained within the realities of the foreign policy.
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The Internet can empower groups whose aims are in fact antithetical to democracy.
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Google’s vision is tools that will do things for you.
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I don't think love for technology itself breeds change.
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It is easy to be seen as either a genius or a crank. If you have a Ph.D., at least you somewhat lower the chances that you will be seen as a crank.
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However revolutionary it may be, the Internet still hasn't altered the basic law of human communication: Being nice to your interlocutors is a good way to start any negotiations, particularly, when being hostile is an open invitation for a cyber-fight.
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Contrary to the utopian rhetoric of social media enthusiasts, the Internet often makes the jump from deliberation to participation even more difficult, thwarting collective action under the heavy pressure of never-ending internal debate.