[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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the Internet might not lead to the empowerment of young people but could instead trap them in passive consumption.
Evgeny Morozov's quote critiques the commonly held belief that the Internet will inspire social change among young people. Instead, he argues that it may serve as a distraction that keeps them indoors, passively consuming content rather than actively participating in societal change, effectively likening it to a modern opiate that dulls their engagement with the world around them.
In practice
In a debate about youth activism today, this quote could illustrate the potential distractions posed by the internet.
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.
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.
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.
YouTube has a hundred engineers who are trying to get the perfect next video to play automatically. And their techniques are only going to get more and more perfect over time, and we will have to resist the perfect.
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you're not the customer. You're the product.
The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
Most of the value of deep learning today is in narrow domains where you can get a lot of data. Here's one example of something it cannot do: have a meaningful conversation.
I realized that the future of aviation, to which I had devoted so much of my life, depended less on the perfection of aircraft than on preserving the epoch-evolved environment of life, and that this was true of all technological progress.
We went to Ladakh ... and we asked this woman, 'What was the benefit you had from solar electricity?' And she thought for a minute and said, 'It's the first time I can see my husband's face in winter.'
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