Robert Darnton Quotes

The Internet has not become the great leveller that it was once thought it could be.

Technology produces a new division of haves and have nots.

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.

Five or ten years ago, when it was clear the Internet was becoming a mainstream phenomenon, it was equally clear that a lot of people were being left out and could be left behind.

I don't even want to guess at what computer literacy might do to children, except to say that if cyberspace is considered a place, then there are people who are already in it and people who are not in it.

I think there's a great homogenizing force that software imposes on people and limits the way they think about what's possible on the computer. Of course, it's also a great liberating force that makes possible, you know, publishing and so forth, and standards, and so on.

The Internet is the single biggest creator of ignorance mankind has ever created, as well as the single biggest eliminator of that ignorance. It’s our ability to filter that eliminates the former and empowers the latter.

If you look at all the technology we're interconnected with every day, all this complex technology that connects humanity, it actually doesn't connect us.

Technology is not going to be perceived by different classes of people in the same way.

Although we use a lot of technology and consume a lot of technology as people of color, we're usually not the ones at the tables doing the creating of it.

The Internet has become the go-to place to toss out ideas in the hope that they could lead to a job, but it has also become the place where people go to find the best ideas, creating a lopsided dynamic that tends to benefit people in power.

The difference between people who can read and write and those who can't is just absolutely astronomical.

It should bother you that the Internet connections in South Korea average more than 4 times as fast as America’s.

I never read books - and still don't read books - to develop them.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet's corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

I see tech as... a force that is changing pretty much all parts of our society. It's really sad for me that we don't have enough women that are part of that.

I learnt to read when I was five, and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me.

For many children, the library represents their only access to books, reading, and the Internet outside of their home. If you think about how far behind a child would be without access to these fundamental tools - tools that are vital to successful employment later in life - it's a travesty.

That's what's good about the digital revolution is it makes information asymmetry much harder to maintain.

We don't have a public that really understands the world anymore, and in the age of complexity, that problem becomes much more difficult.

I wasn't weaned on the web nor coddled on a computer. Instead, I grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know. My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives.

Our social fabric is sundered. GoFundMe and the other crowdfunding sites that have proliferated since 2010 are an example of what has sprung up in its place, what I have called America's dystopian social net. That is, we now require private solutions to what are public problems.

The Internet has destroyed irony in the world, or at least wounded it considerably. What are we to do about an invention whose end result is that starving people in China are looking up things on marthastewart.com?

People complain about the rich-and-poor divide. It's crazy, no doubt about it. But what gets me is that today, a billionaire or head of state on their smartphone has the same direct access to information as a homeless person has on a smartphone - or a person in Bangladesh or Papua New Guinea.

For all the opportunities that arise from the Fourth Industrial Revolution - and there are many - it does not come without risks. Perhaps one of the greatest is that the changes will exacerbate inequalities. And as we all know, a more unequal world is a less stable one.