#internet

[The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. ↗

— Lawrence Lessig

#ideas #internet #open-government #writing #change

One of the problems the internet has introduced is that in this electronic village, all the village idiots have internet access. ↗

— Peter Nelson

#electronic #idiots #internet #introduced #problems

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#internet #online-writing #social-networking #twitter #age

It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge. ↗

— Caleb Carr

#internet #age

I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it. ↗

— Brian Eno

#internet #music #records #age

Without sounding too cliche, the Internet really is the birth of global mind. ↗

— Terence McKenna

#cliche #global #internet #mind #really

One of the biggest changes in our society is the shift from prevention to reaction... ↗

— Clay Shirky

#change

I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and half an hour later you're somewhere you didn't expect to be. It doesn't work that same way in books, does it? Even if you have an encyclopedia, the trail isn't that crazy. I like that aspect of it. ↗

— David Sedaris

#movies

Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#death-and-dying #humor #humorous #humorous-quotations #internet

Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down. You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#clay-aiken #deification #disappointment #disinformation #heroes