[T]he ways in which the information we give off about our selves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier for us to find each other but also to be scrutinized in public.

The loss of control you fear is already in the past.

When you make the claim that something on the Internet is going to be good for democracy, you often [hear], 'Are you talking about the thing with the singing cats?'

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

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

The transfer of [...] capabilities from various professional classes to the general public is epochal.

The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.