Since I became chairman, I've tried to turn EFF into civil liberties and responsibilities.

If the past decade was the decade of searching and finding and looking for stuff, this coming decade is going to be the decade of filtering and going to your friends for recommendations.

What's really going on here is, this is a media shift. It's comparable to what happened in the 1950s and the birth of electronic mass media back then.This is the birth of a new kind of personal media, where, instead of we're all watching one program, we're all watching each other. And the history of media makes it really clear. Whenever we have a big innovation, the first wave of stuff we do is pretty crummy. The printing press gave us pornography, cheap thrillers, and how-to books. Television gave us Newt Minow's vast wasteland.

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.

Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy.

People still have a choice, but, if they find it all too confusing, or they just want someone else to make a choice for them, there's a default that works pretty well. That's this concept of libertarian paternalism. And it's handy.

The nature of business and government has been to build a surplus and self-perpetuate, but the Internet fosters and rewards smaller, more fluid organizations.