Evgeny Kuznetsov Quotes

The Revenge of Adam Defoe ~ Evgeny Levin

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. ~ Evgeny Morozov

There is this group of people who love innovation. Those people want to innovate, and they think the Internet is a wonderful tool for innovation, which is true. But you also have to remember that much of that innovation is constrained within the realities of the foreign policy. ~ Evgeny Morozov

I went to SXSW in 2011. God, that was awful. I mean, I only went because my publisher wanted me to promote the book and the organizers invited me and it seemed silly not to go, especially for a relatively unknown first-time author. This is just not my cup of tea; the fewer such events I do on an annual basis, the happier I feel. ~ Evgeny Morozov

We can now with Google Glasses record everything around us, and we can make sure that nothing is ever forgotten because everything is stored somewhere in Google servers or somewhere else. ~ Evgeny Morozov

In short, Google prefers a world where we consistently go to three restaurants to a world where our choices are impossible to predict. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Look at something like cooking. Now, you would hear a lot about smart kitchens and augmented kitchens. And what do those smart kitchens actually do? They police what's happening inside the kitchen. They have cameras that distinguish ingredients one from each other and that tell you that shouldn't mix this ingredient with another ingredient. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Information wants to eat brie. ~ Evgeny Morozov

In part, slacktivism is what happens when the energy of otherwise dedicated activists is wasted on approaches that are less effective than the alternatives. ~ Evgeny Morozov

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. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Dictators aren't stupid, or regimes could be toppled easily by young people mobilizing on Facebook. ~ Evgeny Morozov

I'm active on Twitter, and I love my iPad and my Kindle. ~ Evgeny Morozov

We must not fixate on what this new arsenal of digital technologies allows us to do without first inquiring what is worth doing. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking. ~ Evgeny Morozov

The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes. ~ Evgeny Morozov

For Silicon Valley and its idols, innovation is the new selfishness. ~ Evgeny Morozov

My hunch is that people often affiliate with causes online for selfish and narcissistic purposes. Sometimes, it may be as simple as trying to impress their online friends, and once you have fashioned that identity, there is very little reason to actually do anything else. ~ Evgeny Morozov

As smart technologies become more intrusive, they risk undermining our autonomy by suppressing behaviors that someone somewhere has deemed undesirable. ~ Evgeny Morozov

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. ~ Evgeny Morozov

However revolutionary it may be, the Internet still hasn't altered the basic law of human communication: Being nice to your interlocutors is a good way to start any negotiations, particularly, when being hostile is an open invitation for a cyber-fight. ~ Evgeny Morozov

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. ~ Evgeny Morozov

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. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Steve Jobs was notoriously blunt about products he found wanting, but his attack on Flash - Adobe's popular technology for playing multimedia content inside a browser - was particularly vicious. Claiming it was buggy and insecure, Jobs banned it from the iPad. ~ Evgeny Morozov

If we don't like rent control, we ought to oppose it on political and social grounds - and not just by arguing that, thanks to smartphones and social networks, we can create new, more efficient markets for matching short-term renters with tenants. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Diplomacy is, perhaps, one element of the U.S. government that should not be subject to the demands of 'open government'; whenever it works, it is usually because it is done behind closed doors. But this may be increasingly hard to achieve in the age of Twittering bureaucrats. ~ Evgeny Morozov

There are good reasons why we don't want everyone to learn nuclear physics, medicine or how financial markets work. Our entire modern project has been about delegating power over us to skilled people who want to do the work and be rewarded accordingly. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't. ~ Evgeny Morozov

My fear is that many institutions will eventually alter how they treat people who refuse to self-track. There are all sorts of political and moral implications here, and I'm not sure that we have grappled with any of them. ~ Evgeny Morozov

If you use your smart toothbrush, the data can be immediately sent to your dentist and your insurance company, but it also allows someone from the NSA to know what was in your mouth three weeks ago. ~ Evgeny Morozov

I had a few fights last year, but I need to take boxing lessons. I need to, because in the NHL it's required. ~ Maxim Kuznetsov

One possible future for WikiLeaks is to morph into a gigantic media intermediary - perhaps, even something of a clearing house for investigative reporting - where even low-level leaks would be matched with the appropriate journalists to pursue and report on them and, perhaps, even with appropriate NGOs to advocate on their causes. ~ Evgeny Morozov

In addition to their 'do no evil' motto, Googlers have always been guided by another, much less explicit philosophy: 'computational arrogance.' ~ Evgeny Morozov

You know, it's not a given that there is an 'online' and 'offline' world out there. When you use the telephone, you don't say that I'm entering some 'telephono-sphere.' You don't say that, and there is no obvious need to say that when you are using a modem. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Truly smart technologies will remind us that we are not mere automatons who assist big data in asking and answering questions. ~ Evgeny Morozov

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. ~ Evgeny Morozov

The spirit of the Internet. This spirit is a powerful myth concocted by overzealous legal activists, and the sooner we bury it, the better. ~ Evgeny Morozov

We need to start seeing privacy as a commons - as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer. ~ Evgeny Morozov

If I, as a human being and artist represent anything in the world, it is my Jewish people, and therefore Israel is the only state on our planet which I want to represent with my art and all my public activities, no matter where I live. ~ Evgeny Kissin

Smart technologies are not just disruptive; they can also preserve the status quo. Revolutionary in theory, they are often reactionary in practice. ~ Evgeny Morozov

As leakers take great risks in releasing information, assuring them that they are not sacrificing themselves in vain and that their leaks would have public consequences would most likely encourage more people to leak. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Cybercriminals are usually driven by profit, while cyberterrorists are driven by ideology. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing. ~ Evgeny Morozov

The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Calling China's online censorship system a 'Great Firewall' is increasingly trendy, but misleading. All walls, being the creation of engineers, can be breached with the right tools. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Most other documents leaked to WikiLeaks do not carry the same explosive potential as candid cables written by American diplomats. ~ Evgeny Morozov