Our social life is literally primal, in the sense that chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives among the primates, are also social.

It is possible to think that the Internet will be a net positive for society while admitting that there are significant downsides - after all, it's not a revolution if nobody loses.

The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs.

Indeed, the best practical reason to think that social media can help bring political change is that both dissidents and governments think they can. All over the world, activists believe in the utility of these tools and take steps to use them accordingly. And the governments they contend with think social media tools are powerful, too, and are willing to harass, arrest, exile, or kill users in response.

Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.

The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life. Though the hive is not part of any individual bee, it is part of the colony, both shaped by and shaping the lives of its inhabitants.

Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.