Quote

Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't.

Evgeny Morozov

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Evgeny Morozov
Age: 40
Born: 1984
Born: January 1
Computer Scientist
Journalist
Writer
Making
Hooked
Accessible
Loan
Customers
Noble
Millions
Getting
Loans
Goal
Previously

More quotes by Evgeny Morozov

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Technology changes all the time human nature hardly ever.
Evgeny Morozov
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In part, slacktivism is what happens when the energy of otherwise dedicated activists is wasted on approaches that are less effective than the alternatives.
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You know, it's not a given that there is an 'online' and 'offline' world out there. When you use the telephone, you don't say that I'm entering some 'telephono-sphere.' You don't say that, and there is no obvious need to say that when you are using a modem.
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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.
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In the past it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB ... used to torture in order to get this data.
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
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For all its shortcomings, Wikipedia does have strong governance and deliberative mechanisms anyone who has ever followed discussions on Wikipedia's mailing lists will confirm that its moderators and administrators openly discuss controversial issues on a regular basis.
Evgeny Morozov
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If we don't like rent control, we ought to oppose it on political and social grounds - and not just by arguing that, thanks to smartphones and social networks, we can create new, more efficient markets for matching short-term renters with tenants.
Evgeny Morozov
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When we can commit a crime, we can also trigger debate. Cases go to courts. Media start covering the cases. But once you build smart environments where, if you meet a certain probabilistic profile, you won't even be allowed to board a bus, let alone commit a crime, we're perpetuating existing laws so they face no challenges or revision.
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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This is the real tragedy of America's 'Internet freedom agenda': It's going to be the dissidents in China and Iran who will pay for the hypocrisy that drove it from the very beginning.
Evgeny Morozov
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This marketization of personal information is a big mistake.
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.
Evgeny Morozov
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In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to.
Evgeny Morozov
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The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes.
Evgeny Morozov
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The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.
Evgeny Morozov
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When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen - that's a direct quote - it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.
Evgeny Morozov
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I'm rarely invited to start-up parties, but who cares about their trinkets and apps anyway?
Evgeny Morozov
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The decentralized nature of online conversations often makes it easier to manipulate public opinion, both domestically and globally. Regimes that once relied on centralized systems of media control can now deliver ideological messages more subtly, with the help of little-known intermediaries like anonymous commenters on websites.
Evgeny Morozov
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'Solutionism' for me is, above all, an unthinking pursuit of perfection - by means of technology - without coming to grips with the fact that imperfection is an essential feature of liberal democracy.
Evgeny Morozov