Eli Pariser Quotes

Everyone is on the internet but they're not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don't talk to one another. So while the internet brings everyone into a shared space, it does not necessarily bring them together.

The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it's allowed is silos of interest.

The once-science-fiction notion of hyper-connectivity - where we are all constantly connected to social networks and other bubbling streams of digital data - has rapidly become a widespread reality.

We have to wonder whether digital technology, rather than making it easier to communicate, is actually doing the opposite. We now sit alone at a keyboard, firing off zeros and ones into the ether. Offices are silent.

It's my fond hope that social networks such as Facebook will help users broaden their perspectives by listening to a different set of people than they encounter in their daily life. But I fear services such as Facebook may be turning us into imaginary cosmopolitans.

It won't be long before the Facebook generation will be rejected by the non-Facebook people who will be rejected by the post-Facebook people. Everyone will be on their own planet.

I don't read blogs, I don't have MySpace, I don't have Facebook or Twitter - none of that.

We can be incredibly disconnected in this day and age with computers and cell phones.

I think there's a gigantic generation gap in terms of how people understand the Internet and how much they think technology is an important factor in social change.

The Internet has made some phenomenal breakthroughs that are still only poorly understood in terms of changing people's ideas of us and them. If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.

I think that new communications are wonderful and I am delighted to be a part of the Internet generation.

I've used a cellphone exactly twice. Things move on. The world changes. And I don't know it.

With the Internet, we can communicate instantly across the globe, but the net also makes it possible for us to shrink ever further into our own skins - a state of being that neither suits the human temperament nor provides ground for further growth.

Digital technology is both arousing and distancing. We don't look at the users on the other side as people. They aren't - they're just usernames, Facebook photos and Twitter handles.

The advantage of the internet is that it has taken away the charade of politics. China has heard of democracy and people know about certain concepts they wouldn't have previously.

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 find it amusing that I'm on the Internet now, because I've criticized it, but mainly I've criticized it on the basis of, 'What are you going to do with it?'

When I first came out there was no such thing as Twitter or Facebook. And the blogs! Like, what is that?

Media and technology are our greatest assets. And yet, they are our most undervalued and underused assets. Now when I say that, people look at me like I'm crazy because every young person we know in the world is never without media, ever.

What we have found is that because of smartphones and access to media, and because everybody knows how everyone else lives, you have no idea where the next huge social movement is going to erupt.

By 2007, we were finally living in a culture where people get what networks are and what technology can do to connect people.

Our printing press is the Internet. Our coffee houses are social networks.

The wider world is a click away, but whether we mean to or not, we're usually filtering it out.

I don't know a single person who is not immersed in the digital universe. Even people who are strongly anti-technology are probably voicing that view on a Web site somewhere. Third-world villagers without electricity have cellphones.

The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control.