Quote

You have to think back to the '90s. The computer was this terrible-looking thing that was trying to compete with the television. And it was this idea of email and chat rooms and this kind of stuff that first people - got people there.

Tim Wu

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Tim Wu
Age: 54
Academic
Journalist
Legal Scholar
Washington
District of Columbia
Timothy Wu
Timothy Shiou-Ming Wu
吳修銘
Thinking
Back
Compete
People
Ideas
Computer
Firsts
Terrible
First
Rooms
Thing
Television
Trying
Looking
Kind
Idea
Chat
Think
Stuff
Email

More quotes by Tim Wu

Image
I'm kind of concerned the combined effect, not only Google, all these companies is kind of to make us more boring and that seems the opposite of what the Internet was supposed to be.
Tim Wu
Image
There is this inherent human instinct that the usual way you control trolling is you force people to use their real identities. So there's less trolling on Facebook, for example.
Tim Wu
Image
Every time you click on a like button on another site, you've told Facebook that you're doing that. And so therefore advertisers know who their fan base is.
Tim Wu
Image
I don't think anyone at Google feels happy about it, but they've been in some sense, you know, enslaved to their business model, and so they have to satisfy their advertisers.
Tim Wu
Image
The blessing of the state, implicit or explicit, has been crucial to every twentieth-century information empire.
Tim Wu
Image
What's so interesting about the internet - I keep saying this - is the web has gotten worse over the last five years as opposed to better.
Tim Wu
Image
When you pay for stuff, it has more of your interests in heart.
Tim Wu
Image
The most interesting thing about Google is its founders hated advertising.
Tim Wu
Image
One thing I'll say about Hitler that many people don't realize - and I don't mean to besmirch the industry - but he did get his start, not only as an artist, but as an advertising man writing art for advertisements.
Tim Wu
Image
There's always people - it doesn't take many - who have a different psychological makeup than most of us who really get joy out of provoking. They don't always believe the things they say, they just like to watch people go crazy. You know, I knew people like that in elementary school - bullies of one kind or another.
Tim Wu
Image
You know, it's so funny that the internet's become a series of traps where you do sort of innocent things like give your name or address or indicate a preference, I like this thing, and then therefore you open yourself up to a deluge of advertising based on those stated preferences.
Tim Wu
Image
Now, he doesn't control the media, but Donald Trump has been incredibly successful in having his face appear everywhere. You cannot go a day without seeing that face somewhere maybe 10 times.
Tim Wu
Image
Markets are born free, yet no sooner are they born than some would-be emperor is forging chains. Paradoxically, it sometimes happens that the only way to preserve freedom is through judicious controls on the exercise of private power. If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion.
Tim Wu
Image
The case for industry breakups comes from Thomas Jefferson's idea that occasional revolutions are important to the health of any system. As he wrote in 1787, “a little rebellion every now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical one.
Tim Wu
Image
The Holy Grail of advertising has always been advertisement that people want to watch, which occasionally happens. You know, the Super Bowl, people sit there and watch the advertisements. Some print advertising is very beautiful.
Tim Wu
Image
I am the most concerned that we end up in a situation where your - everything is known about you and so therefore, not only Google, but Google, Facebook, Twitter - the whole set of companies - essentially knows all your weaknesses and therefore how to manipulate you in subtle ways in order to have you do things you might not otherwise do.
Tim Wu
Image
Trolling is an ancient problem. It's been around as long as there has been media.
Tim Wu
Image
Advertising always corrupts the goal of the search engine, which is to try to give you the most important stuff, not the stuff someone paid there to be there.
Tim Wu
Image
Hitler understood the demagogues' essential principle to teach or persuade is far more difficult than to stir emotion.
Tim Wu
Image
If you really care about content, you should pay for it.
Tim Wu