Today, if you have an Internet connection, you have at your fingertips an amount of information previously available only to those with access to the world's greatest libraries - indeed, in most respects what is available through the Internet dwarfs those libraries, and it is incomparably easier to find what you need.
Interpretation
The Internet provides unparalleled access to information that surpasses traditional libraries.
Peter Singer's quote highlights the transformative power of the Internet in democratizing access to information. In the past, only a select few had the privilege to access vast knowledge in great libraries, but now, with an Internet connection, anyone can easily find and utilize that wealth of information, making knowledge more accessible than ever before.
In practice
In a digital literacy workshop, this quote can emphasize the importance of utilizing online resources.
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.)
The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.
The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.
What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent.
There's only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that's already been written.
The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.
Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.