Howard Rheingold Quotes

It's hard to say conversation has become a minimal thing, because look at the rise of mobile communications in the last 10 years. It used to be only the president had a mobile phone. Now everyone on earth, even if they have nothing else, they have a cell phone.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

The Internet is truly God's gift to the Chinese people.

I think the iPhone was as significant an invention as the Gutenburg press, in terms of the future of humanity.

Men knew little, formerly, of what was passing beyond ... their own immediate neighborhood, but now, through the ... newspapers ... town and country, state and nation, and the most distant parts of the world are brought together, and whatever is new, rare and important, is conveyed with rapidity to every reader ... set forth in the most succinct manner, and in a style adapted to the comprehension of all.

There were no bubbles before there were media.

This [the advent of radio] was the first time in the history of mankind that people in different places heard the same thing at the same time.

The technological transformation of society contains within itself the dynamo of its own management, but only if we create laws and regulations to permit the information revolution to wash through our democratic structures.

At Facebook, we're inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information. We often talk about inventions like the printing press and the television - by simply making communication more efficient, they led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society. They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together.

This is a very exciting time in the world of information. It's not just that the personal computer has come along as a great tool. The whole pace of business is moving faster. Globalization is forcing companies to do things in new ways.

We should leave this archaic, developing world mentality behind. If you want to be a developed country, you have to learn to cope with the media.

… post-industrial society

Technology has become our culture

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations

Like it or not, the United States is a revolutionary power. Whether the government is trying to overthrow foreign dictators is almost irrelevant. American society is about the most revolutionary force on the planet. The Internet is more subversive than the CIA in its prime. The dynamism of American Society is constantly creating new businesses, new technologies, new ideas and new social models. These innovations travel, and they make trouble when they do.

Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterized by a refusal to remember.

By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.

We changed the world many ways with the Internet.

We've moved from a small world on a big planet to a big world on a small planet.

The trends that are shaping the twenty-first-century world embody both promise and peril. Globalization, for example, has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while contributing to social fragmentation and a massive increase in inequality, not to mention serious environmental damage.

The future has both gritty and savage and clean and 'techno-hip.' I think it's a very realistic point of view.

I think technology can change every country regardless of political party.

The Internet isn't just itself a revolution - it sometimes starts them, too.

We have something very powerful in our hands with the Internet, and we still don't really understand fully its power.

Advances in technology and the Internet have dramatically changed the way we communicate, live, and work.