As the Internet breaks down the last justifications for a professional class of politicians, it also builds up the tools for replacing them.
Now that everyone has a license to speak, the question is – who gets heard?
Most people’s major life changes don’t come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
Steadfastness is a noble quality, but unguided by knowledge or humility, it becomes rashness, or obstinacy.
The adults were completely wrong.
Being around some of the bright lights of the technology world and having them expect great things helps you sit down and do it seriously.
Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in.
Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
I’m a teenage kid who’s interested in improving the world.
The law about what is stealing is very clear. Stealing is taking something away from someone so they cannot use it. There’s no way that making a copy of something is stealing under that definition.
Geeks seem a lot more willing to treat people based on what they can do rather than who they are.
On the one hand, I want to be very open about everything, On the other, I heavily defend people’s right to privacy.
The people rose up, and they caused a sea change in Washington.
Growing up, I slowly had this process of realizing that all the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be, they weren’t natural at all. They were things that could be changed, and they were things that, more importantly, were wrong and should change, and once I realized that, there was really no going back.
You only get to see your own perspective. And even our mistakes make sense from our perspective – we see all of the context, everything that led up to it. It all makes sense because we saw it happen. When we screw up, it’s for a reason. When other people screw up, it’s because they’re screwups.
The scary thing is that the more open our markets get, the faster people can move their money around and the more trading is based on this kind of speculation instead of serious analysis. And that’s scary because – recall – the whole point of the stock market is to decide the crucial question of what we, as a society, should build for the future. As Keynes says, “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.
Transparency can be a powerful thing, but not in isolation. So, let’s stop passing the buck by saying our job is just to get the data out there and it’s other people’s job to figure out how to use it. Let’s decide that our job is to fight for good in the world. I’d love to see all these amazing resources go to work on that.
In other words, instead of providing a place for a group of like-minded people to come together, magazines provide a sampling of what a group of like-minded people might say in such an instance so that you can pretend you’re part of them.
The director J. D. Walsh says good stories should be like the poster for Transformers. There’s a huge evil robot on the left side of the poster and a huge, big army on the right side of the poster. And in the middle, at the bottom, there’s just a small family trapped in the middle. Big stories need human stakes.
All censorship should be deplored.