In Google's world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to.

The great temptation of Big Data is that we can stop worrying about comprehension and focus on preventive action instead. Instead of wasting precious public resources on understanding the 'why' - i.e., exploring the reasons as to why terrorists become terrorists - one can focus on predicting the 'when' so that a timely intervention could be made.

The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes.

I think governments will increasingly be tempted to rely on Silicon Valley to solve problems like obesity or climate change because Silicon Valley runs the information infrastructure through which we consume information.

iPod liberalism [is] where we assume that every single Iranian or Chinese who happens to have and love his iPod will also love liberal democracy.

Information wants to eat brie.

In China, Internet surveillance has already become a profitable industry. In fact, a growing number of private firms eagerly assist the local police by aggregating this data and presenting it in easy-to-browse formats, allowing humans to pursue more analytical tasks.