“If the mass-media era had brought us Hitler and Stalin, they believed, the internet would bring us back our individuality. Finally, we could do away with hierarchy, bureaucracy, and totalitarianism. Finally, we could just be ourselves, together.”— Fred Turner, harpers.org
“With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it.”— Mark Zuckerberg, facebook.com
“Decentralization won’t free us of hierarchies, it will establish new ones. Instead of being ruled by the politicians and religious leaders, we’ll be ruled by the technologists and their code.”— Zach LeBeau, medium.com
“Nearly 250 million video surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the world, and chances are you’ve been seen by several of them today. Most people barely notice their presence anymore — on the streets, inside stores, and even within our homes. We accept the fact that we are constantly be…”— Tarun Wadhwa, marketwatch.com
“So Facebook, born of the open Internet that knocked down the traditional barriers to information, becomes a gatekeeper itself. It now has an inordinate power to control a good part of the national discussion should it choose to do so, a role it shares with Silicon Valley competitors like Google and…”— Jim Rutenberg, nytimes.com
“The Iron Curtain has been supplanted by a mental glass curtain. The Berlin wall has been supplanted by the invisible wall, the unrelenting wall of the interface and transparency which, unlike the other, lets everything through, transfuses all light, relentlessly illuminates every nook and cranny, ev…”— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com
“The 20th century taught us the consequences of using hierarchical means to pursue supposedly non-hierarchical ends. The 21st century may show us how supposedly non-hierarchical means can produce hierarchical ends.”— Anonymous, crimethinc.com
“The network is still controlled centrally by an authority, but it functions in a decentralized way.”— Douglas Rushkoff, amazon.com
“Before he’d quit doing interviews, the previous fall, he’d taken to dropping the word totalitarian. Younger interviewers, to whom the word meant total surveillance, total mind control, gray armies in parade with medium-range missiles, had understood him to be saying something unfair about the Intern…”— Jonathan Franzen, amazon.com