Personalization is based on a bargain. In exchange for the service of filtering, you hand large companies an enormous amount of data about your daily life--much of whic you might not trust your friends with.

We bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back.

Whether it's Facebook or Google or the other companies, that basic principle that users should be able to see and control information about them that they themselves have revealed to the companies is not baked into how the companies work. But it's bigger than privacy. Privacy is about what you're willing to reveal about yourself.

We thought that the Internet was going to connect us all together. As a young geek in rural Maine, I got excited about the Internet because it seemed that I could be connected to the world. What it's looking like increasingly is that the Web is connecting us back to ourselves.

By constantly moving the flashlight of your attention to the perimeter of your understanding, you enlarge your sense of the world.

Your computer monitor is a kind a one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.

If you only have one shot at writing a headline, there's a lot of pressure.