The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful.
When something online is free, you're not the customer, you're the product.
If what you are getting online is for free, you are not the customer, you are the product.
If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you.
The Internets distinct configuration may have made cyberattacks easy to launch, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom.
When I worry about privacy I worry about peer-to-peer invasion of privacy. About the fact that anytime anything of any note happens, there are three arms holding cell phones with cameras in them or video records capturing the event ready to go on the nightly news, if necessary. And I think that does change a lot our sense of what is going on in our neighborhoods.
There are some conversations that are undeniably improved when the rule going in is that you have to stand behind what you say and have to wear a name tag when you do it. But that's certainly not all conversations. People might be prepared to ethically stand behind what they say, but might be in a position that they can't afford to lose their house over it. Speech shouldn't just be for people with lawyers.
Enterprising law-enforcement officers with a warrant can flick a distant switch and turn a standard mobile phone into a roving mic or eavesdrop on occupants of cars equipped with travel assistance systems.
Being closed to outsiders made the iPhone reliable and predictable.
Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able to demand some details of your online activities from service providers - and not to tell you about it.
Generativity is a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.
What keeps me up late at night, in the sense of worry, I guess it's innovation. It's funny to be worried about it, because it's a fair point that wow, look at the innovation we've seen over the past, not just 30 years, but over the past two years.
It's hard to try to be a canary in the coal mine in Internet because right now we're enjoying such innovation. But at the same time, we are truly in the midst of a sea change in how controllable the technology we use day by day is, and it is getting more and more controllable by a distinct group of entities, who may have our best interests in mind, at least at consumers right now, but they can change their minds or be regulated, forced to change their minds later.
Digital books and other texts are increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers and libraries.
Another view is Western companies chartered in societies that believe in this kind of censorship shouldn't be carrying water for societies that do.
