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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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Evgeny Morozov
Age: 40
Born: 1984
Born: January 1
Computer Scientist
Journalist
Writer
Nature
Control
Regimes
Centralized
Littles
Opinion
Deliver
Subtly
Little
Public
Online
Relied
Like
Known
Systems
Globally
Help
Messages
Anonymous
Often
Conversation
Ideological
Intermediaries
Helping
Easier
Manipulate
Decentralized
Makes
Media
Conversations
Domestically

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In short, Google prefers a world where we consistently go to three restaurants to a world where our choices are impossible to predict.
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Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.
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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.
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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.
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While free software was meant to force developers to lose sleep over ethical dilemmas, open source software was meant to end their insomnia.
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There is this absurd assumption that the revitalisation of the public sphere is always a good thing. I think people tend to confuse 'civic' and 'civil,' and they believe that everything that is done by citizens is necessarily a good thing because you build a network, an association.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Mobile phones are one of the most insecure devices that were ever available, so they're very easy to trace they're very easy to tap.
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In addition to their 'do no evil' motto, Googlers have always been guided by another, much less explicit philosophy: 'computational arrogance.'
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I'm active on Twitter, and I love my iPad and my Kindle.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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