#intern

Something like missionary reductionism has happened to the internet with the rise of web 2.0. The strangeness is being leached away by the mush-making process. Individual web pages as they first appeared in the early 1990S had the flavor of personhood. MySpace preserved some of that flavor, though a process of regularized formatting had begun. Facebook went further, organizing people into multiple-choice identities, while Wikipedia seeks to erase point of view entirely. If a church or government were doing these things, it would feel authoritarian, but when technologists are the culprits, we seem hip, fresh, and inventive. People will accept ideas presented in technological form that would be abhorrent in any other form. It is utterly strange to hear my many old friends in the world of digital culture claim to be the true sons of the Renaissance without realizing that using computers to reduce individual expression is a primitive, retrograde activity, no matter how sophisticated your tools are. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#facebook #internet #myspace #technology #web

The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#internet

Only on the Internet can a person be lonely and popular at the same time. ↗

— Allison Burnett

#internet #loneliness #loneliness-on-the-net #internet

Pixies have to be invited in, like vampires. I read it on the Internet. Well, there you go, I mutter. Then it must be true. ↗

— Carrie Jones

#internet

You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. ↗

— Bob Black

#neo-situationism #philosophy #political-philosophy #political-science #post-left-anarchy

He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act ↗

— Plato

#education #inspiration #international-relations #kurt-hahn #service

My first thought was, “I got a haircut and trimmed my pubes for this job interview?” Then I thought, “Maybe being a political intern isn’t such a bad gig after all. I could learn the ropes that bind the people into bondage.”
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#dirty #haircut #intern #internship #interview

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization. These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there. While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy. ↗

— Julian Assange

#dystopia #fascism #government #internet #privacy

This could seem counterintuitive for many dictators running communist or socialist single-party states, but a thriving private tech industry can contribute invaluable tools to help you implement a controllable internet. The reason is fairly simple: the technologies that transform internet applications into more personalized, efficient and enjoyable experiences are usually the same ones that increase the capacity to monitor its users. ↗

— Laurier Rochon

#dicatators #internet #experience

Hermes gazed up at the stars. "My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don't appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet-" "You invented the Internet?" It was my idea, Martha said. Rats are delicious, George said. "It was my idea!" Hermes said. "I mean the Internet, not the rats. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#george #hermes #humor #internet #martha