Quotes & Sayings About Internet And Democracy

It is not inevitable that the Internet will evolve in a manner compatible with democracy. — Rebecca MacKinnon

If you wanted to bestow the grandiose title of "most successful organization in modern history," you would struggle to find a more obviously worthy nominee than the federal government of the United States.
In its earliest stirrings, it established a lasting and influential democracy. Since then, it has helped defeat totalitarianism (more than once), established the world's currency of choice, sent men to the moon, built the Internet, nurtured the world's largest economy, financed medical research that saved millions of lives and welcomed eager immigrants from around the world. — David Leonhardt

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing. — Rebecca MacKinnon

We're at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that's compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air. — Rebecca MacKinnon

When you make the claim that something on the Internet is going to be good for democracy, you often [hear], 'Are you talking about the thing with the singing cats?' — Clay Shirky

Those who applaud social production and networked amateurism, the colorful cacophony that is the Internet, and the creative capacities of everyday people to produce entertaining and enlightening things online, are right to marvel. There is amazing inventiveness, boundless talent and ability, and overwhelming generosity on display. Where they go wrong is thinking that the Internet is an egalitarian, let alone revolutionary, platform for our self-expression and development, that being able to shout into the digital torrent is adequate for democracy. — Astra Taylor

The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are disillusioned with democracy do not dream about the Chinese model or any other form of authoritarian rule. They do not dream about government that controls Internet and puts in prison those daring to disagree. — Ivan Krastev

The Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy. — Joe Green

The Internet ... has become the voice of the people in the first genuine experiment in democracy yet conducted in America. It stands ready to serve every facet, every faction. — Gerry Spence

The Internet was crucial for our success. It is a great thing. It is a big democracy because people can choose what they like. — Stjepan Hauser

The Internet has done a wonderful thing for us. But democracy doesn't work unless people are well informed, and I don't know that we are. People just don't have the time. — Brad Pitt

The Internet is democracy's revenge on democracy. — Molly Haskell

A short exposure to the convention convinced me that the Internet may save the Democracy in that it is a way for the people, for the citizens, to have some direct influence on the government. — John Jay Hooker

The fundamental problem is that every technology embeds the ideologies of its creators! Who made the Internet? The military! The Internet is the product of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency! We call it DARPA for short! Who worked for DARPA? DARPA was a bunch of men! Not a single woman worked on the underlying technologies that fuel our digital universe! Men are the shit of the world and all of our political systems and philosophies were created and devised without the input of women! Half of the world's population lives beneath systems of government and technological innovation into which their gender had zero input! Democracy is a bullshit ideology that a bunch of slaveholding Greek men constructed between rounds of beating their wives! All the presumed ideologies of men were taken for inescapable actualities and designed into the Internet! Packet switching is an incredible evil! — Jarett Kobek

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind. — Chris Hedges

Somewhere along the way these countries [EU] redefined the relationship between government and citizen into something closer to pusher and addict. And, once you've done that, it's very hard to persuade the addict to cut back his habit. Thus, the general acceptance everywhere but America is that the state should run your health care. A citizen of an advanced democracy expects to be able to choose from dozens of breakfast cereals, hundreds of movies at the video store, and millions of porno sites on the Internet, but when it comes to life-or-death decisions about his own body he's happy to have the choice taken out of his hands and given to the government. — Mark Steyn

Net neutrality is the right thing for our democracy, economy, and global competitiveness. And Americans support an open Internet. — Marvin Ammori

The case for democracy is not esthetic. — George Will

The Internet can empower groups whose aims are in fact antithetical to democracy. — Evgeny Morozov

The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy? — Rebecca MacKinnon

The advantage of the internet is that it has taken away the charade of politics. China has heard of democracy and people know about certain concepts they wouldn't have previously. — Marilyn Manson

People don't talk to each other. You're alone with your television set or internet. But you can't have a functioning democracy without what sociologists call "secondary organizations," places where people can get together, plan, talk and develop ideas. You don't do it alone. — Noam Chomsky

[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

The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age. — Rebecca MacKinnon

In the early 2000s, people expected that anonymity on the Internet would be positive for the development of democracy in South Korea. In a Confucian culture like South Korea's, hierarchy can block the free exchange of opinions in face-to-face situations. The web offered a way around that. — Kim Young-ha

Eventually I foresee voting on the Internet, which will lead to much more direct democracy. — Dick Gephardt

California has often led the country, indeed the world, in the technology, consumption, trends, lifestyles, and of course, mass entertainment. It is where the car found its earliest and fullest expression, where suburbs blossomed, where going to gym replaced going to church, where forces that lead so many to assume that direct democracy is the wave of the future - declining political parties, telecommuting, new technology, the internet generation 0 are all most well developed in this vast land. — Fareed Zakaria

One must be wary of the view that these loose and diverse coalitions represent a new form of globalized participatory democracy. The dissent industry is largely a product of the Internet revolution. Inexpensive, borderless, real-time networking provides advocacy non-governmental organizations [NGOs] with economies of scale and also of scope by linking widely disparate groups with one common theme. — Sylvia Ostry