“People who work on social software are closer in spirit to economists and political scientists than they are to people making compilers. They both look like programming, but when you’re dealing with groups of people as one of your run-time phenomena, that is an incredibly different practice. In the political realm, we would call these kinds of crises a constitutional crisis.”
—Clay Shirky, “A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy”
October 2011
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“You can offer the ability to citizens to choose from one of the two parties and elect their leaders as much as you want. But ‘democracy’ is an illusion — a sham — if the most significant acts taken by those leaders are kept concealed from the citizenry.”
—Glenn Greenwald
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“It is also important to understand that “intellectual property” is a logically and morally illegitimate concept. Speaking of intellectual property is an attempt to force an inherently acorporal substance (data) to behave and be governed in the manner of physical objects. This cannot work, and whenever it is attempted, repression and fascism are the logical and entirely predictable outcomes.”
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“‘Look at this beautiful kitten.’ ‘Fuck you, that kitten’s a socialist.’ ‘You’re a fag.’ Basically, that’s the crux of all Internet discussion.”
—Jeff Tweedy
