The goal of privacy is not to protect some stable self from erosion but to create boundaries where this self can emerge, mutate, and stabilize.
One would think that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the intellectual poverty of technocracy and the primacy of politics over it would be a well-established truth in need of no further defense.
We must not fixate on what this new arsenal of digital technologies allows us to do without first inquiring what is worth doing.
If Amazon’s dream of a world without gatekeepers becomes reality, then the company itself will become a powerful gatekeeper.
If the only hammer you are given is the Internet, it’s not surprising that every possible social and political problem is presented as an online nail.
Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.
The idea that the Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to admit its downside.
Surveillance cameras might reduce crime – even though the evidence here is mixed – but no studies show that they result in greater happiness of everyone involved.
A vibrant civil society can challenge those in power by documenting corruption or uncovering activities like the murder of political enemies. In democracies, this function is mostly performed by the media, NGOs or opposition parties.
For much of its existence, design was all about convenience. We wanted to hide technology so that users are not distracted into thinking about the tools they use.
Information technology has been one of the leading drivers of globalization, and it may also become one of its major victims.
‘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.