Howard Rheingold Quotes & Sayings

“You can't have an industrial revolution, you can't have democracies, you can't have populations who can govern themselves until you have literacy. The printing press simply unlocked literacy.”

“You can't assume any place you go is private because the means of surveillance are becoming so affordable and so invisible.”

“Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.”

“We are moving rapidly into a world in which the spying machinery is built into every object we encounter.”

“Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time.”

“Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create.”

“People's social networks do not consist only of people they see face to face. In fact, social networks have been extending because of artificial media since the printing press and the telephone.”

“Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control.”

“Mindfulness means being aware of how you're deploying your attention and making decisions about it, and not letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.”

“Some digital natives are extraordinarily savvy.”