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Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.

Evgeny Morozov

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Evgeny Morozov
Age: 40
Born: 1984
Born: January 1
Computer Scientist
Journalist
Writer
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More quotes by Evgeny Morozov

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It is easy to be seen as either a genius or a crank. If you have a Ph.D., at least you somewhat lower the chances that you will be seen as a crank.
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WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire US government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.
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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.
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Information technology has been one of the leading drivers of globalization, and it may also become one of its major victims.
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[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.
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The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes.
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Steve Jobs was notoriously blunt about products he found wanting, but his attack on Flash - Adobe's popular technology for playing multimedia content inside a browser - was particularly vicious. Claiming it was buggy and insecure, Jobs banned it from the iPad.
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As befits Silicon Valley, 'big data' is mostly big hype, but there is one possibility with genuine potential: that it might one day bring loans - and credit histories - to millions of people who currently lack access to them.
Evgeny Morozov
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It's true that virtually all new technologies do trigger what sociologists would call 'moral panics,' that there are a lot of people who are concerned with the possible political and social consequences, and that this has been true throughout the ages.
Evgeny Morozov
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The implications are clear: Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively.
Evgeny Morozov
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However revolutionary it may be, the Internet still hasn't altered the basic law of human communication: Being nice to your interlocutors is a good way to start any negotiations, particularly, when being hostile is an open invitation for a cyber-fight.
Evgeny Morozov
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Personalization can be very useful in some contexts but very harmful in others. Searching for pizza online, it's probably OK to keep showing the same pizza shop as your No. 1 choice. I don't see any big political consequences out of that.
Evgeny Morozov
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Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking.
Evgeny Morozov
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The bigger the network, the harder it is to leave. Many users find it too daunting to start afresh on a new site, so they quietly consent to Facebook's privacy bullying.
Evgeny Morozov
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Cyberattacks have become a permanent fixture on the international scene because they have become easy and cheap to launch. Basic computer literacy and a modest budget can go a long way toward invading a country's cyberspace.
Evgeny Morozov
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I spent two years in Palo Alto - what an awful, suffocating place for those of us who don't care about yoga, yogurts and start-ups - and now I have moved to Cambridge, MA - which, in many respects, is like Palo Alto but a bit snarkier.
Evgeny Morozov
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Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara.
Evgeny Morozov
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The great temptation of Big Data is that we can stop worrying about comprehension and focus on preventive action instead. Instead of wasting precious public resources on understanding the 'why' - i.e., exploring the reasons as to why terrorists become terrorists - one can focus on predicting the 'when' so that a timely intervention could be made.
Evgeny Morozov
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Much of the real computer talent today is concentrated in the private sector.
Evgeny Morozov
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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.
Evgeny Morozov