Top 100 Evgeny Morozov Quotes
#1. In reality, quitting Facebook is much more problematic than the company's executives suggest, if only because users cannot extract all the intangible social capital they have generated on the site and export it elsewhere.
Evgeny Morozov
#2. To me, the success of the cyberactivists in Tunisia is actually very interesting, because many of them explicitly rejected any support from Washington.
Evgeny Morozov
#3. While free software was meant to force developers to lose sleep over ethical dilemmas, open source software was meant to end their insomnia.
Evgeny Morozov
#4. Sleephackers go to bed with sensors on their wrists and foreheads and maintain detailed electronic sleep diaries, which they often share online. To shift between sleep phases, sleephackers experiment with various diets, room and body temperatures, and kinds of pre-sleep physical exercise.
Evgeny Morozov
#5. Search without Google is like social networking without Facebook: unimaginable.
Evgeny Morozov
#6. A lot of the geeks in Silicon Valley will tell you they no longer believe in the ability of policymakers in Washington to accomplish anything. They don't understand why people end up in politics; they would do much more good for the world if they worked at Google or Facebook.
Evgeny Morozov
#7. 'Solutionism' for me is, above all, an unthinking pursuit of perfection - by means of technology - without coming to grips with the fact that imperfection is an essential feature of liberal democracy.
Evgeny Morozov
#8. Technological defeatism - a belief that, since a given technology is here to stay, there's nothing we can do about it other than get on with it and simply adjust our norms - is a persistent feature of social thought about technology. We'll come to pay for it very dearly.
Evgeny Morozov
#9. Faster roads are not always safer roads - and virtually all societies, democratic or authoritarian, prefer safety over speed, even if many of their citizens enjoy fast driving.
Evgeny Morozov
#10. Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time - so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?
Evgeny Morozov
#11. Cloud computing is a great euphemism for centralization of computer services under one server.
Evgeny Morozov
#12. The Internet has made it much more effective and cheaper to spread propaganda.
Evgeny Morozov
#13. It's true that virtually all new technologies do trigger what sociologists would call 'moral panics,' that there are a lot of people who are concerned with the possible political and social consequences, and that this has been true throughout the ages.
Evgeny Morozov
#14. However revolutionary it may be, the Internet still hasn't altered the basic law of human communication: Being nice to your interlocutors is a good way to start any negotiations, particularly, when being hostile is an open invitation for a cyber-fight.
Evgeny Morozov
#15. Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who celebrated the anguish of decision as a hallmark of responsibility, has no place in Silicon Valley.
Evgeny Morozov
#16. There is this huge Roma problem in Europe. There are a lot of Romas who are discriminated against in countries like the Czech Republic or Hungary. They are an ethnic minority that in Europe everyone loves to hate.
Evgeny Morozov
#17. Truly smart technologies will remind us that we are not mere automatons who assist big data in asking and answering questions.
Evgeny Morozov
#18. It is easy to be seen as either a genius or a crank. If you have a Ph.D., at least you somewhat lower the chances that you will be seen as a crank.
Evgeny Morozov
#19. I think governments will increasingly be tempted to rely on Silicon Valley to solve problems like obesity or climate change because Silicon Valley runs the information infrastructure through which we consume information.
Evgeny Morozov
#20. When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen - that's a direct quote - it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.
Evgeny Morozov
#21. The Internet can empower groups whose aims are in fact antithetical to democracy.
Evgeny Morozov
#22. As leakers take great risks in releasing information, assuring them that they are not sacrificing themselves in vain and that their leaks would have public consequences would most likely encourage more people to leak.
Evgeny Morozov
#23. To reject solutionism is to transcend the narrow-minded rationalistic mindset that recasts every instance of an efficiency deficit [ ... ] as an obstacle that needs to be overcome.
Evgeny Morozov
#24. As smart technologies become more intrusive, they risk undermining our autonomy by suppressing behaviors that someone somewhere has deemed undesirable.
Evgeny Morozov
#25. [People] somehow assume that the Internet is going to be the catalyst of change that will push young people into the streets, while in fact it may actually be the new opium for the masses which will keep the same people in their rooms downloading pornography.
Evgeny Morozov
#26. The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters.
Evgeny Morozov
#27. Technology changes all the time; human nature, hardly ever.
Evgeny Morozov
#28. In short, Google prefers a world where we consistently go to three restaurants to a world where our choices are impossible to predict.
Evgeny Morozov
#29. Cybercriminals are usually driven by profit, while cyberterrorists are driven by ideology.
Evgeny Morozov
#30. When we get the remote Russian village online, what will get people to the Internet is not going to be reports from Human Rights Watch. It's going to be pornography, 'Sex and the City,' or maybe funny videos of cats.
Evgeny Morozov
#31. IPod liberalism [is] where we assume that every single Iranian or Chinese who happens to have and love his iPod will also love liberal democracy.
Evgeny Morozov
#32. WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire U.S. government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.
Evgeny Morozov
#33. We need to start seeing privacy as a commons - as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer.
Evgeny Morozov
#34. My fear is that many institutions will eventually alter how they treat people who refuse to self-track. There are all sorts of political and moral implications here, and I'm not sure that we have grappled with any of them.
Evgeny Morozov
#35. Diplomacy is, perhaps, one element of the U.S. government that should not be subject to the demands of 'open government'; whenever it works, it is usually because it is done behind closed doors. But this may be increasingly hard to achieve in the age of Twittering bureaucrats.
Evgeny Morozov
#36. Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.
Evgeny Morozov
#37. Mobile phones are one of the most insecure devices that were ever available, so they're very easy to trace; they're very easy to tap.
Evgeny Morozov
#38. In addition to their 'do no evil' motto, Googlers have always been guided by another, much less explicit philosophy: 'computational arrogance.'
Evgeny Morozov
#39. We can now with Google Glasses record everything around us, and we can make sure that nothing is ever forgotten because everything is stored somewhere in Google servers or somewhere else.
Evgeny Morozov
#40. In China, Internet surveillance has already become a profitable industry. In fact, a growing number of private firms eagerly assist the local police by aggregating this data and presenting it in easy-to-browse formats, allowing humans to pursue more analytical tasks.
Evgeny Morozov
#41. There are good reasons why we don't want everyone to learn nuclear physics, medicine or how financial markets work. Our entire modern project has been about delegating power over us to skilled people who want to do the work and be rewarded accordingly.
Evgeny Morozov
#42. You know, anyone who wears glasses, in one sense or another, is a cyborg.
Evgeny Morozov
#43. As economic life relies more and more on the Internet, the potential for small bands of hackers to launch devastating attacks on the world economy is growing.
Evgeny Morozov
#44. Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara.
Evgeny Morozov
#45. I want to prevent us reifying 'the Internet' as something to be preserved like some people want to preserve the American Constitution as it was written.
Evgeny Morozov
#46. A faithful lifehacker would use technology to avoid dead time and move on to the entertaining, more gratifying activities as soon as possible.
Evgeny Morozov
#47. If you use your smart toothbrush, the data can be immediately sent to your dentist and your insurance company, but it also allows someone from the NSA to know what was in your mouth three weeks ago.
Evgeny Morozov
#49. The implications are clear: Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively.
Evgeny Morozov
#50. Whether greater cybersecurity requires a greater sacrifice of our digital freedoms is an important debate that we should be having, preferably with all the facts in front of us.
Evgeny Morozov
#51. There is this absurd assumption that the revitalisation of the public sphere is always a good thing. I think people tend to confuse 'civic' and 'civil,' and they believe that everything that is done by citizens is necessarily a good thing because you build a network, an association.
Evgeny Morozov
#52. The bigger the network, the harder it is to leave. Many users find it too daunting to start afresh on a new site, so they quietly consent to Facebook's privacy bullying.
Evgeny Morozov
#53. In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to.
Evgeny Morozov
#54. There is this group of people who love innovation. Those people want to innovate, and they think the Internet is a wonderful tool for innovation, which is true. But you also have to remember that much of that innovation is constrained within the realities of the foreign policy.
Evgeny Morozov
#55. There is no doubt that the Internet brims with spamming, scamming and identity fraud. Having someone wipe out your hard drive or bank account has never been easier, and the tools for committing electronic mischief on your enemies are cheap and widely accessible.
Evgeny Morozov
#56. For many oppositional movements, the Internet, while providing the opportunity to distribute information more quickly and cheaper, may have actually made their struggle more difficult in the long run.
Evgeny Morozov
#57. Most other documents leaked to WikiLeaks do not carry the same explosive potential as candid cables written by American diplomats.
Evgeny Morozov
#58. In part, slacktivism is what happens when the energy of otherwise dedicated activists is wasted on approaches that are less effective than the alternatives.
Evgeny Morozov
#59. The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.
Evgeny Morozov
#60. Surveillance cameras might reduce crime - even though the evidence here is mixed - but no studies show that they result in greater happiness of everyone involved.
Evgeny Morozov
#62. To understand the limits and opportunities of algorithms in the context of artistic creation, we need to understand that the latter usually consists of three elements: discovery, production, and recommendation.
Evgeny Morozov
#63. Military commanders do not want to be tried for war crimes, even if those crimes are committed online.
Evgeny Morozov
#64. Would you like all of your Facebook friends to sift through your trash? A group of designers from Britain and Germany think that you might. Meet BinCam: a 'smart' trash bin that aims to revolutionize the recycling process.
Evgeny Morozov
#65. The most effective system of Internet control is not the one that has the most sophisticated and draconian system of censorship, but the one that has no need for censorship whatsoever.
Evgeny Morozov
#66. Amnesia and complete indifference to history (especially the history of technological amnesia) remain the defining features of contemporary Internet debate.
Evgeny Morozov
#67. Information technology has been one of the leading drivers of globalization, and it may also become one of its major victims.
Evgeny Morozov
#68. My hunch is that people often affiliate with causes online for selfish and narcissistic purposes. Sometimes, it may be as simple as trying to impress their online friends, and once you have fashioned that identity, there is very little reason to actually do anything else.
Evgeny Morozov
#69. If you trace the history of mankind, our evolution has been mediated by technology, and without technology it's not really obvious where we would be. So I think we have always been cyborgs in this sense.
Evgeny Morozov
#70. If Amazon's dream of a world without gatekeepers becomes reality, then the company itself will become a powerful gatekeeper.
Evgeny Morozov
#71. You actually see liberals checking 'Fox News,' if only to know what the conservatives are thinking. And you're seeing conservatives who venture into liberal sources, just to know what 'The New York Times' is thinking.
Evgeny Morozov
#72. The idea that the Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to admit its downside.
Evgeny Morozov
#73. When it is about technology, there is this tendency to just reject all criticism as being anti-technological and anti-modern. I think this is very unhealthy.
Evgeny Morozov
#74. For Silicon Valley and its idols, innovation is the new selfishness.
Evgeny Morozov
#75. Much of the real computer talent today is concentrated in the private sector.
Evgeny Morozov
#76. Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.
Evgeny Morozov
#77. It is true that authoritarian governments increasingly see the Internet as a threat in part because they see the U.S. government behind the Internet.
Evgeny Morozov
#78. I worry that as the problem-solving power of our technologies increases, our ability to distinguish between important and trivial or even non-existent problems diminishes.
Evgeny Morozov
#79. Social media's greatest assets - anonymity, 'virality,' interconnectedness - are also its main weaknesses.
Evgeny Morozov
#80. This marketization of personal information is a big mistake.
Evgeny Morozov
#81. We must not fixate on what this new arsenal of digital technologies allows us to do without first inquiring what is worth doing.
Evgeny Morozov
#82. Smart technologies are not just disruptive; they can also preserve the status quo. Revolutionary in theory, they are often reactionary in practice.
Evgeny Morozov
#83. Steve Jobs was notoriously blunt about products he found wanting, but his attack on Flash - Adobe's popular technology for playing multimedia content inside a browser - was particularly vicious. Claiming it was buggy and insecure, Jobs banned it from the iPad.
Evgeny Morozov
#84. For much of its existence, design was all about convenience. We wanted to hide technology so that users are not distracted into thinking about the tools they use.
Evgeny Morozov
#85. I spent two years in Palo Alto - what an awful, suffocating place for those of us who don't care about yoga, yogurts and start-ups - and now I have moved to Cambridge, MA - which, in many respects, is like Palo Alto but a bit snarkier.
Evgeny Morozov
#86. Dictators aren't stupid, or regimes could be toppled easily by young people mobilizing on Facebook.
Evgeny Morozov
#87. I want my government to do something about my privacy - I don't want to just do it on my own.
Evgeny Morozov
#88. Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't.
Evgeny Morozov
#89. If the only hammer you are given is the Internet, it's not surprising that every possible social and political problem is presented as an online nail.
Evgeny Morozov
#90. North Korea aside, most authoritarian governments have already accepted the growth of the Internet culture as inevitable; they have little choice but to find ways to shape it in accord with their own narratives - or risk having their narratives shaped by others.
Evgeny Morozov
#91. If you want to plan a revolution, you never do it in public - the authorities show up and arrest everyone.
Evgeny Morozov
#92. To fully absorb the lessons of the Internet, urge the Internet-centrists, we need to reshape our political and social institutions in its image.
Evgeny Morozov
#93. I don't think love for technology itself breeds change.
Evgeny Morozov
#94. I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?'
Evgeny Morozov
#95. In business, standards establish the rules of the game, creating path dependencies as investments are made and corresponding designs are set in stone and plastic. Inferior standards can prevail due to smart marketing or industry collusion.
Evgeny Morozov
#96. The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom.
Evgeny Morozov
#97. For all its shortcomings, Wikipedia does have strong governance and deliberative mechanisms; anyone who has ever followed discussions on Wikipedia's mailing lists will confirm that its moderators and administrators openly discuss controversial issues on a regular basis.
Evgeny Morozov
#98. I'm active on Twitter, and I love my iPad and my Kindle.
Evgeny Morozov
#99. The message I'm trying to send is that technology is political, and that many decisions that look like decisions about technology actually are not at all about technology - they are about politics, and they need to be scrutinized as closely as we would scrutinize decisions about politics.
Evgeny Morozov
#100. The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes.
Evgeny Morozov
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