I think e-mail petitions are an illusion. It gives people the illusion that they're participating in some meaningful political action.
Howard RheingoldWhen designers replaced the command line interface with the graphical user interface, billions of people who are not programmers could make use of computer technology.
Howard RheingoldYou 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.
Howard RheingoldIt's too late by the way, with virtual reality. You can't put the genie back into the bottle.
Howard RheingoldThere is the global teenager hypothesis, that what happened in the '60s in America was that there was, the baby boom cohort grew up at the same time that television and popular music grew up, so that we had this carrier frequency that we all tuned into that gave us the feeling of a common culture, even though I was in Phoenix and someone was in Des Moines. That now we are getting the global cohort at the same time we have our first global communications. MTV is everywhere.
Howard Rheingold