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The quote suggests that governments must either embrace the open access of the internet or risk becoming outdated and oppressive.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.)
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
AI-assisted driving is a perfect platform for advancing fundamental human-centric artificial intelligence research while also producing practical applications.
Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge.
... the Kindle is a "roach motel" device: its license terms and DRM ensure that books can check in, but they can't check out.
Software companies should take more responsibility for security holes, especially in browsers and e-mail clients. There are some straightforward things the industry should be doing right now to fix things, and I don't know why they haven't been done yet.
Did you know that Kodak actually invented the digital camera that ultimately put it out of business? Kodak had the patents and a head start, but ignored all that.
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