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.
Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.
I want my government to do something about my privacy – I don’t want to just do it on my own.
My fear is that many institutions will eventually alter how they treat people who refuse to self-track. There are all sorts of political and moral implications here, and I’m not sure that we have grappled with any of them.
When it is about technology, there is this tendency to just reject all criticism as being anti-technological and anti-modern. I think this is very unhealthy.
When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen – that’s a direct quote – it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.
If you trace the history of mankind, our evolution has been mediated by technology, and without technology it’s not really obvious where we would be. So I think we have always been cyborgs in this sense.
Google’s vision is tools that will do things for you.
Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time – so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?
This marketization of personal information is a big mistake.
For Silicon Valley and its idols, innovation is the new selfishness.
Smart technologies are not just disruptive; they can also preserve the status quo. Revolutionary in theory, they are often reactionary in practice.
While free software was meant to force developers to lose sleep over ethical dilemmas, open source software was meant to end their insomnia.
I don’t think love for technology itself breeds change.
WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire US government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.
Would you like all of your Facebook friends to sift through your trash? A group of designers from Britain and Germany think that you might. Meet BinCam: a ‘smart’ trash bin that aims to revolutionize the recycling process.
You actually see liberals checking ‘Fox News,’ if only to know what the conservatives are thinking. And you’re seeing conservatives who venture into liberal sources, just to know what ‘The New York Times’ is thinking.
You know, it’s not a given that there is an ‘online’ and ‘offline’ world out there. When you use the telephone, you don’t say that I’m entering some ‘telephono-sphere.’ You don’t say that, and there is no obvious need to say that when you are using a modem.
Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.
Simply getting a country’s population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.