Ory Okolloh Quotes

The evolution of social media into a robust mechanism for social transformation is already visible. Despite many adamant critics who insist that tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are little more than faddish distractions useful only to exchange trivial information, these critics are being proven wrong time and again.

The amazing thing about technology is that people have power. We are seeing it all the time in that innocuous people you would never know are having their voices heard because of this ability and technology we have.

In the 21st century, you have to use technology as one of the tools in the toolkit to bring about social change.

When you think about Twitter and you think what a dumb stupid throwaway technology, and then you have the Iranian elections and it actually saves the day - you can't prejudge technologies now because they have effects you may not have intended.

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge.

Society has changed so dramatically that it's empowered the individual, and technology has a lot to do with that. Years ago, if you had a bad experience at a restaurant, you could complain to the manager. Maybe you could picket. Now, you go online and write a review that may go viral.

People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences.

I laugh at stuff like Snapchat thinking it can change the world.

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

Twitter, it can be said, completely changed the way activism is done, who can participate, and even how we define it.

I think that I am seeing the Internet and seeing technology take and seeing how the work I do through music directly affects people's lives better than any politician I've ever met.

We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be.

I think there's been a major shift in grass roots media because of the Internet and because the geeks and nerds rule the world. They are in control in so many ways.

Today, for the first time - and the Obama campaign showed us this - we can go from the digital world, from the self-organizing power of networks, to the physical one.

Social networking technology didn't really exist until 2004-2005. I had the idea to use this technology to bridge this gap between a general interest in addressing social issues and the practical action.

Social media has changed the world forever. We're not going to go backwards. People are not going to accept being poor, accept being excluded anymore.

The notion of the Internet as a force of political and social revolution is not a new one. As far back as the early 1990s, in the early days of the World Wide Web, there were technologists and writers arguing forcefully that the Internet was destined to become the most important tool for cultural change in human history.

Technology and social media have brought power back to the people.

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.

I realized that social media can be powerful force for good in the world and that acts of kindness can be scaled globally.

When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen - that's a direct quote - it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.

Digital activism did not spring immaculately out of Twitter and Facebook. It's been going on ever since blogs existed.

The rise of Twitter defined 2011. Once every 5-7 years, a company emerges that changes not just the technology industry, but the world... after what some viewed as a rocky start, in 2011 Twitter broke through into the elite group of companies that profoundly shape our world.

The intersection of political analysis and Internet theory is a busy crossroad of cliche, where familiar rhetorical vehicles - decentralized authority, emergent leadership, empowered grass roots - create a ceaseless buzz.