Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of its constituent groups.

We are in a world where most American citizens over the age of 12 share things with each other online.

It used to be expensive to make things public and cheap to make them private. Now it's expensive to make things private and cheap to make them public.

It did not take long after the rise of the commercial printing press before someone figured out that erotic novels were a good idea. ... It took people another 150 years to even think of the scientific journal.

[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.

We're not good at thinking fast. We are good at feeling fast.

Wikipedia is forcing people to accept the stone-cold bummer that knowledge is produced and constructed by argument rather than by divine inspiration.