quotations about the Internet
Chance favors the connected mind.
STEVEN JOHNSON
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Well, the Internet is this miracle. It is an absolutely extraordinary idea that you can press a send button, and you are publishing to the world.
BARRY DILLER
USA Today, Apr. 30, 2009
Each time we dispatch an email in one way or another, we feel a sense of accomplishment, and our brain gets a dollop of reward hormones telling us we accomplished something. Each time we check a Twitter feed or Facebook update, we encounter something novel and feel more connected socially (in a kind of weird, impersonal cyber way) and get another dollop of reward hormones. But remember, it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of the brain driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centres in the prefrontal cortex. Make no mistake: email-, Facebook- and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
The Organized Mind
The number of websites increases in geometric proportions every year, every month. It is said that one month in Internet is like one year outside the net. In fact, net professionals are known for their reluctance to take more than a seven or ten days vacation. They are concerned that the competition may outrun them.
SANTIAGO POSTEGUILLO
Netlinguistics
I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid. Not every single thing, but anything of value.
BARRY DILLER
interview, ZDNEt, Jun. 10, 2009
Managing your own impression on the Internet is like navigating white water with two-by-fours for oars.
PATRICIA WALLACE
The Psychology of the Internet
The Internet is like a huge library with vast resources of information available. It is impossible to keep track of all the numerous services it provides as well as account for frequent changes. Without a feasible means of searching, and, better still, of cataloguing and indexing, finding information on the Internet is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
JIMIN HE
Internet Resources for Engineers
Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority. It wasn't like somebody told me about it and I said, "I don't know how to spell that." I said, "Yeah, I've got that on my list, so I'm okay." But there came a point when we realized it was happening faster and was a much deeper phenomenon than had been recognized in our strategy.
BILL GATES
speech at Washington University, Jul. 2, 1998
Only on the Internet can a person be lonely and popular at the same time.
ALLISON BURNETT
Undiscovered Gyrl
There are some people who imagine that older adults don't know how to use the internet. My immediate reaction is, "I've got news for you, we invented it."
VINT CERF
attributed, "Your Life: Vinton Cerf", AARP Bulletin, December 2016
The Net's interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.
NICHOLAS CARR
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
When we sent that first message, there weren't any reporters, cameras, tape recorders or scribes to document that major event.... We knew we were creating an important new technology that we expected would be of use to a segment of the population, but we had no idea how truly momentous an event it was.
LEONARD KLEINROCK
"Internet Began 35 Years Ago at UCLA with First Message Ever Sent Between Two Computers", September 2, 2004
The internet is like the central nervous system of modern society.
WEI ZHAO
"A Discussion About the Impact of Electronic Commerce on Accounting", 2013 International Conference on Complex Science Management and Education
Stupid Internet. I don't know why everyone is so impressed with it.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Elle Magazine, March 19, 2014
Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us.
JON STEWART
College of William & Mary Commencement Address, May 20, 2004
Censorship is saying: "I'm the one who says the last sentence. Whatever you say, the conclusion is mine." But the internet is like a tree that is growing. The people will always have the last word -- even if someone has a very weak, quiet voice. Such power will collapse because of a whisper.
AI WEIWEI
"China's censorship can never defeat the internet", The Guardian, April 15, 2012
There's going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn't necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You've got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.... So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said "of course there is".
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Fortune Brainstorm panel, 2008
There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world.
JOSE SARAMAGO
interview, "O Globo", July 2009
The first person to see the video, a computer programmer in Houston, was stunned. He e-mailed the file to a list of twenty friends on his share list. The next person to view it seconds later lived in France and suffered from insomnia. In tears, she sent it to fifty friends. The third viewer was from South Africa and was so incensed at what he'd seen that he phoned the BBC and then did an e-mail blast to eight hundred of his "closest" mates on the Web. A teenage girl in Norway watched the video in horror and then forwarded it to every person she knew. The next thousand people to view it lived in nineteen different countries and shared it with thirty friends each, and they with dozens each. What had started as a digital raindrop in the Internet ocean quickly exploded into a pixel-and-byte tsunami the size of a continent.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Whole Truth
The internet today is an open platform where the demand for websites and services dictates success. You've got barriers to entry that are low and equal for all comers. And it's because the internet is a neutral platform that I can put on this podcast and transmit it over the internet without having to go through some corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship. I don't have to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the internet as we know it. They say they want to create high-speed lanes on the internet and strike exclusive contractual arrangements with internet content-providers for access to those high-speed lanes. Those of us who can't pony up the cash for these high-speed connections will be relegated to the slow lanes ... We can't have a situation in which the corporate duopoly dictates the future of the internet and that's why I'm supporting what is called net neutrality.
BARACK OBAMA
podcast, Jun. 8, 2006