The hope of internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that governments must either embrace the open access of the internet or risk becoming outdated and oppressive.
Peter Singer highlights the dilemma faced by repressive governments in the context of the internet. On one hand, they can choose to accept and leverage the internet's power to disseminate information widely, which could empower citizens and promote freedom. On the other hand, they risk relegating themselves to a backward, authoritarian stance by limiting access to the internet to only a select few, exemplified by the actions of North Korea. This reflects a broader commentary on the transformative potential of technology in society.
In practice
During a lecture on digital rights, this quote can be used to illustrate the challenges faced by authoritarian regimes in the digital age.
The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.
Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can legitimately be killed - shows that.
If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.
Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.)
Software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software.
The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven't existed in the past.
With tech companies, whoever's the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, 'Is this the end of them?' And - there's more - more times people think that's the case than it really is the case.
Government isn't that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you've got to have commercial companies do it.
With 'The Social Network,' I got into it at first because frankly I thought there was a cool courtroom drama to be had with the intellectual properties. And then what further drew me in was that the most extraordinary social networking device ever created was created by the world's most antisocial person. I liked that story.
The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.
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