quotations about the Internet
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders.
JOHN PERRY BARLOW
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
The scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further from me, and everything inside it seemed piercingly relevant. The blogs of strangers had to be read daily, and people nearby who had no web presence were becoming almost cartoonlike, as if they were missing a dimension.
MIRANDA JULY
It Chooses You
Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.
DOROTHY GAMBRELL
Cat and Girl: Volume I
I think of the internet like this big, new, powerful technology.... We haven't learned as a civilization and a human species how to operate that yet. We as a civilization are still figuring all of that out. It gives us fantastic capabilities. The fact that I can look up almost anything on Wikipedia in five seconds is an unbelievable capability that just simply didn't exist 20 years ago. And so on and so on. But we're also finding out that these powerful tools enable some very bad things, too, like letting authoritarian governments interfere in free democratic elections in the world. This is an incredibly scary thing.
JEFF BEZOS
Business Insider, April 28, 2018
The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity, this is something truly good, a gift from God.
POPE FRANCIS
"Pope: The Internet is a 'gift from God.' But watch out for trolls", CNN, January 23, 2014
At just the time that the Internet is reminding us about the extraordinary value of freedom, the Internet is being changed to take that freedom away. Just as we are beginning to see the power that free resources produce, changes in the architecture of the Internet--both legal and technical--are sapping the Internet of this power. Fueled by a bias in favor of control, pushed by those whose financial interests favor control, our social and political institutions are ratifying changes in the Internet that will reestablish control and, in turn, reduce innovation on the Internet and in society generally.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and half an hour later you're somewhere you didn't expect to be. It doesn't work that same way in books, does it? Even if you have an encyclopedia, the trail isn't that crazy. I like that aspect of it.
DAVID SEDARIS
interview, Bohemian, June 2009
There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the internet, we now know this isn't true.
IAN HART
attributed, Buzzfeed, May 15, 2013
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Neuromancer
I am a product of my age: if something is not on the internet, I assume it is not knowable.
JOEL HENG HARTSE
Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll: My Life on Record
The Internet is like life in general -- it harbours both opportunities and dangers.
ELZA DUNKELS
Youth Culture and Net Culture
It's been my policy to view the internet not as an "information highway", but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.
MIKE ROYKO
"One Good Story From The Internet Deserves Another", Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1996
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
ROGER EBERT
"Critical Eye", Yahoo! Internet Life
The Net is pretty cool, but the physical world is the best medium ever.
JEFF BEZOS
Playboy, Feb. 2000
In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together.
NEIL GROSS
Business Week, 1999
I hear there's rumors on the internets that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a draft, period.
GEORGE W. BUSH
U.S. Presidential Debate, October 8, 2004
Many people forget that the Internet is like a two-way street. You connect to the Internet, and it connects to you.
DOUGLAS SCHWEITZER
Internet Security Made Easy
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
MITCH KAPOR
attributed, Tweet This Book: The 1,400 Greatest Quotes of All Time in 140 Characters or Less
The internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.
JON STEWART
interview, Wired, September 13, 2005