Digital Dialogue Quotes

I don't mind Twitter. I think it's a lot of nonsense, but at least, to me, Twitter is just more of a public forum to have conversation.

People communicate in Twittering ways. I've learned how to do that.

I'm always trying to respond to my Instagram direct messages, even if they're a little weird. I'll have a Q&A on Snapchat and talk to everyone.

The ability to become more accessible, to spread a message further, and to share stories at a faster rate are great things to come from social media. As politicians, we have another platform with which we can reach people but also listen to them.

I think fans have an outlet. Through social media, you can hear them.

I think of Twitter as the place where I go to have a great conversation when I can't have one locally, which seems to be all the time, and the more time that I spend on Twitter, the more I sort of curate this incredible group of very intelligent people that I just get to know purely through the quality of their thoughts.

People are reading more and writing more because of the internet. So the virtual world is a way for me to listen to my readers and interact with my readers. It is a way that they can voice their opinion.

The social-media discourse is very different from what it might be on the ground. It's easy to bloviate without having to look anyone in the eye and then having those sentiments swell and amplify and go viral.

Our compulsive hunger always to know first, speak first and decide first has only been amplified by the fact that we can now all participate instantly in a virtual version of a national cocktail-party conversation on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

Facebook can be an accumulation of different intelligences. Ask a question, translated into many languages and somebody, somewhere in the world, will have an answer.

Down on the ground, we seem to do anything but make lengthy, robust monologues. We can communicate in an instant almost anywhere. Gone is the slow old letter - itself a monologue, a sort of considered performance of best self - and in its place is the e-mail, the text, the SMS, the tweet.

Twitter is an amazing public tool with an incredible capacity for public good.

The idea of harnessing the intelligence of the readership has been lost in the quest for Facebook likes. For many, readers have become synonymous with hateful commenters. It's time for a renewed push to realize some of the original dreams of the web.

Blogging and the Internet allow us to engage in a lot more real time conversations as opposed to a one-way dump of information or a message.

I learned that every conversation shouldn't be had via social media.

One of the wonderful things about Internet is it's like a salon. It brings people together from different intellectual walks of life.

Human beings are human beings. They say what they want, don't they? They used to say it across the fence while they were hanging wash. Now they just say it on the Internet.

I don't think of Twitter as a social network. I think of it as a messaging system that has a lot of social components to it.

Moveon is not a one-way broadcast media. The Internet, when used best, is a two-way media. We have a forum in which people can post comments and those comments can be rated. We get a sense of what people feel most passionately about.

That's what social media is, that's what Twitter is, that's what Facebook posts are. It's just really anti-intellectual.

The first conversation I ever had about the Internet was in 1993 with Robert Wright, who was then a colleague at the 'New Republic.'

Within half an hour of posting a piece on 'Slate,' I get a direct, often hostile and personal, response from readers.

You can be tweeting strangers and saying, 'Don't say that,' but are you saying that to your friends? How about your mom? Your boyfriend at the dinner table who says something homophobic? If you're not saying the same things in person that you're saying online, then what are your tweets doing?

When I was talking to strangers over the Internet in the 1990s, there would be a much more intense connection because they're disembodied, so it's just your brain and your soul interacting with this other person, and it just frees you up in this incredibly empowering way.

I think that Twitter is a useful reporting tool sometimes, but an utterly toxic swamp that nonetheless I engage in more than I probably should.