Douglas Alexander Quotes

We’re in the Internet age, and so domestic politics is no longer domestic, really, It’s international. I don’t think that has quite hit our politicians.

The Egyptian Revolution makes it clear, if anybody was in doubt, that digital technologies are going to play a powerful role in the future of global politics.

News and images move so easily across borders that attitudes and aspirations are no longer especially national. Cyber-weapons, no longer the exclusive province of national governments, can originate in a hacker's garage.

Before, revolutions used to have ideological names. They could be communist, they could be liberal, they could be fascist or Islamic. Now, the revolutions are called under the medium which is most used. You have Facebook revolutions, Twitter revolutions. The content doesn't matter anymore - the problem is the media.

The rise of digital technologies has eroded boundaries: Anyone can participate, start a business, and reach a global audience.

From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.

This idea that the open exchange of information can have a positive global impact is being proven over and over again around the world nearly on a daily basis - and for Secretary Clinton to recognize that, I think, is a huge step.

The Internet is overrated. It's much smaller an innovation than people think it is. I don't think it's changed the way anybody makes music.

You cannot underestimate the impact the Internet has had on British fashion.

With technology and social media and citizen journalism, every rock that used to go unturned is now being flipped, lit and put on TV.

I think the Internet and technology in general has changed everything. We can see it overseas even more with the Arab Spring and so forth.

The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.

Just don’t bet against the Internet.

You can’t blame the message on the medium, not exactly. But maybe, all things considered, arming everyone with pocket supercomputers, and then filtering most of human experience through social-media feedback loops, wasn’t the greatest idea…however glorious modern communications may be, they’ve also empowered a cast of goons, crooks and jihadists to build audiences and influence world-wide.

'Selfie' is the word du jour, and it became cause celebre at Nelson Mandela's funeral when the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt took a selfie with U.S. President Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.

I don't think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn't becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it's very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people 'over the Internet.'

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

Social media and technology are democratising and opening up fashion and the process of fashion for all - this has good and bad sides, but that comes with any change.

I just find it so weird that I can come to another continent and have people turn up. I guess it's just the internet... It just makes it so available to everyone.

Essentially, it's not that technology or cyberspace is some parallel universe that operates tangentially from the world we know; it is simply a new front in the international system.

In my country, Gabon, entry into the digital age, which is the future, can be seen in numerous sectors - from telecommunications to security, finance, and hospitality.

The greatest miracle of the Internet is that it exists - the second greatest is that it persists.

I love social media, and it is an important part of how we make change happen. But we can't retweet ourselves out of our most serious problems.

Without social media, I wouldn't have young girls messaging me from Australia or Mexico City or the Midlands, but I do wonder if I'd be on it if it wasn't part of my job.

I am part of a broad social movement. Ten years ago, it would have unimaginable for some random Dutch historian to go viral when talking about taxes. Yet here we are.