Evgeny Morozov Quotes
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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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I'm active on Twitter, and I love my iPad and my Kindle.
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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 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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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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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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I draw a distinction between freedom of the internet and freedom via the internet. In the first case, it's making sure cyberspace is not over regulated and people can say what they want without fear of repercussions. But that's different from this freedom via the internet notion, which is often touted by all sorts of conservatives and neoconservatives who want young people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world to use Facebook and Twitter and then go oppose their governments.
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Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.
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Dictators aren't stupid, or regimes could be toppled easily by young people mobilizing on Facebook.
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Diplomacy is, perhaps, one element of the U.S. government that should not be subject to the demands of 'open government'; whenever it works, it is usually because it is done behind closed doors. But this may be increasingly hard to achieve in the age of Twittering bureaucrats.
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Much of the real computer talent today is concentrated in the private sector.
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For Silicon Valley and its idols, innovation is the new selfishness.
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Cyberattacks have become a permanent fixture on the international scene because they have become easy and cheap to launch. Basic computer literacy and a modest budget can go a long way toward invading a country's cyberspace.
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For much of its existence, design was all about convenience. We wanted to hide technology so that users are not distracted into thinking about the tools they use.
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If we don't like rent control, we ought to oppose it on political and social grounds - and not just by arguing that, thanks to smartphones and social networks, we can create new, more efficient markets for matching short-term renters with tenants.
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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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As Barbara Streisand discovered, adopting a militaristic posture against a tech-savvy mob of civil libertarians is not going to be of much help: Many of them run their own servers and blogs - and have thousands of friends on their social networks - so overzealous attempts to silence them only lead to wider dissemination of sensitive information.
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Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara.
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The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.
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Truly smart technologies will remind us that we are not mere automatons who assist big data in asking and answering questions.
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Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.
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The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.
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Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.
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I worry that as the problem-solving power of our technologies increases, our ability to distinguish between important and trivial or even non-existent problems diminishes.