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.
Interpretation
The Internet can facilitate quick information sharing, but it may complicate the efforts of oppositional movements over time.
In this quote, Evgeny Morozov suggests that although the Internet offers significant advantages in terms of disseminating information quickly and affordably, it also presents challenges that can hinder the effectiveness of oppositional movements. The very platform that enables faster communication may expose activists to greater scrutiny, misinformation, and state surveillance, thus complicating their struggle for change in the long run.
In practice
In a speech on technology's impact on activism, one might reference this quote to highlight complexities.
Just as Josef K, the protagonist of Kafka's 'The Trial,' awoke one day to discover that he had become part of some unfathomable legal carnival, we, too are frequently waking to discover that the rules of the digital game have once again profoundly changed.
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.
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?'
The newspaper offers something very different from Google's aggregators. It offers a value system, an idea of what matters in the world. Newspapers need to start articulating that value.
Social media's greatest assets - anonymity, 'virality,' interconnectedness - are also its main weaknesses.
The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.
We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with e-mail; it's ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most.
A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.
If you just hold your cell phone for 30 seconds and think backwards through its production, you have the entire techno-industrial culture wrapped up there. You can't have that device without everything that goes with it.
Hard numbers tell an important story; user stats and sales numbers will always be key metrics. But every day, your users are sharing a huge amount of qualitative data, too - and a lot of companies either don't know how or forget to act on it.
Cryptocurrency currencies take the concept of money, and they take it native into computers, where everything is settled with computers and doesn't require external institutions or trusted third parties to validate things.
I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.
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