Because primarily of the power of the Internet, people of modest means can band together and amass vast sums of money that can change the world for some public good if they all agree.
Interpretation
The Internet enables people with limited resources to collaborate and fund initiatives for social good.
In this quote, William J. Clinton emphasizes the transformational impact of the Internet on collective action and social change. By harnessing the power of online connectivity, individuals with modest means can unite their efforts, pool their resources, and effect significant positive change in the world, particularly for public causes, highlighting the democratic nature of funding and activism in the digital age.
In practice
In a speech about grassroots movements, one might reference this quote to illustrate how the Internet empowers marginalized communities.
You know, there was a recent poll which said that young people in the generation of the students here felt it was far more likely that they would see a UFO than that they would draw Social Security... It's very important you understand this. Once you understand this, you realize this is not an episode from the X Files, and you're not more likely to see a UFO if you do certain specific things.
When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.
For too long we've been told about 'us' and 'them.' Each and every election we see a new slate of arguments and ads telling us that 'they' are the problem, not 'us.' But there can be no 'them' in America. There's only us.
There is a huge body of business evidence now showing that energy savings give better service at lower cost with higher profit. We have to tear down barriers to successful markets and we have to create incentives to enter them.
Demand that your government pays more attention. It's immoral that people in Africa die like flies of diseases that no one dies of in the United States. And the more disease there is, the more political unrest there will be, leading to more Darfurs, which the U.S. will have to pay to fix.
I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes.
I believe in the future of AI changing the world. The question is, who is changing AI? It is really important to bring diverse groups of students and future leaders into the development of AI.
Digital presentation is just television in public; we're all just getting together and watching TV without pointing the remote control at the screen.
Technology innovation is starting to explode and having open-source material out there really helps this explosion. You get students and researchers involved and you get people coming through and building start ups based on open source products.
Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.
The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.
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.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.