Sugata Mitra Quotes

Given that my title at Google is Chief Internet Evangelist, I feel like there is this great challenge before me because we have three billion users, and there are seven billion people in the world.

I want more Internet. I want every one of the 6 billion people on the planet to be able to connect to the Internet - I think they will add things to it that will really benefit us all.

We want to make it so that anyone, anywhere - a child growing up in rural India who never had a computer - can go to a store, get a phone, get online, and get access to all of the same things that you and I appreciate about the Internet.

I've talked a lot about the need to promote digital empowerment: to enable any American who wants high-speed Internet access, or broadband, to get it.

If our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present in the new media, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized.

The smug complacency of technology adverts disguises a pretty mixed picture, with too many people not connected, too many passive users of technologies designed for interactive, and far too much talk about empowerment but far too little action to make it happen.

Many people see technology as the problem behind the so-called digital divide. Others see it as the solution. Technology is neither. It must operate in conjunction with business, economic, political and social system.

I had had a lot of experience in bringing the Internet to Australia, and I saw that knowledge in the hands of people achieves reform.

I believe that interconnectivity is a human right.

Computer literacy is a fundamental civil right.

If getting young people computer-literate through putting school systems online is a no-brainer, at least in retrospect, getting older people and those in rural areas online can be a tougher nut to crack.

We've got to get people across this country believing they can be a part of a technology future, that that's going to work for their families in an empowering way.

At the very least, you must make the Internet free in areas that are poverty-stricken. Without the Internet and access to information, poverty-stricken households will never catch up to households above the poverty line - throwing the African-American community deeper into the stone ages.

There's a large risk to our society if a group of people doesn't have access to technology or even the desire to get on the Net and see what opportunities are out there. Technology can be a great equalizer.

Even if the person doesn't know what the internet can do, we can bring it to them and show how it can make a difference in their lives.

We should set a national goal of making computers and Internet access available for every American . . . we must help all Americans gain the skills they need to make the most of the connection.

Even in the developing parts of the world, kids take to computers like fish to water.

Only about 10 percent of India's population uses the web, making it unlikely that Internet freedom will be a decisive ballot-box issue anytime soon.

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.

Soon the digital divide will not be between the haves and the have-nots. It will be between the know-hows and the non-know-hows.

Broadband eliminates so many barriers to entry for so many different people that it's actually become a barrier to entry in and of itself if you're not getting online on a regular basis.

I was the first to advocate the Web. But I am very troubled by this thing that every kid must have a laptop computer. The kids are totally in the computer age. There's a whole new brain operation that's being moulded by the computer.

Thanks to modern technology, we now can deliver every text in every research library to every citizen in our country, and to everyone in the world. If we fail to do so, we are not living up to our civic duty.

We know that for every 1 person who get access to the Internet, one new job gets created, and one person gets lifted out of poverty. So in theory, going and connecting everyone on the Internet is a large national and even global priority.

I think the Internet is absolutely extraordinary. It's very, very useful and I think one of the things we've got to do is make sure that the African continent gets on to that information super highway.