The virtual world is a 'public square' much more vast than Tiananmen Square. And you can't send in the tanks to crush the netizens.
Jared CohenRead
Technology is a tool, and it's a platform. Nobody gets arrested for being a blogger; people get arrested for dissent. Nobody gets arrested for putting information about themselves online; they get arrested for being an activist. I'm a strong believer in the fact that you should not blame the tools; you should blame the circumstances.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Technology is neutral; it's how it's used that determines its impact on society.
In this quote, Jared Cohen emphasizes that technology itself is merely a tool or platform without inherent moral value. He argues that people are not penalized for the use of technology for benign purposes like blogging or sharing personal information, but rather face consequences when they use it to challenge authority or advocate for change, highlighting the importance of context and intention behind the use of technology in society.
Themes
TechnologyToolsSocietyActivismCircumstances
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about online censorship, one might quote Cohen to highlight the distinction between the medium and the message.
More from Jared Cohen
All quotes →Name any issue in the world, I can tell you how technology is intertwined with it. I can tell you how technology will make it better. How it can make it worse. It needs to be part of everything that we do, whether you are a government or a company or a citizen.
Jared CohenRead
Similar quotes
The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history. And it is. But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world.
Trevor PaglenRead
Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the barely-intelligent creatures left behind. And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith.
Peter WattsRead
Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection - without pretending that access itself is such a right.
Vint CerfRead
The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.
Tim Berners-LeeRead
Internet-centric companies have already begun changing the rules with binge-watching, flexible running times, fewer commercials, and crowd-sourced content. The brainpower - and just plain power - of the most valued tech firms will change things even more.
Steven LevyRead
With the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate and suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.
Marshall McluhanRead