The hope of internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that governments must either embrace the open access of the internet or risk becoming outdated and oppressive.
Peter Singer highlights the dilemma faced by repressive governments in the context of the internet. On one hand, they can choose to accept and leverage the internet's power to disseminate information widely, which could empower citizens and promote freedom. On the other hand, they risk relegating themselves to a backward, authoritarian stance by limiting access to the internet to only a select few, exemplified by the actions of North Korea. This reflects a broader commentary on the transformative potential of technology in society.
In practice
During a lecture on digital rights, this quote can be used to illustrate the challenges faced by authoritarian regimes in the digital age.
The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all.
Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers. How bad a pain is depends on how intense it is and how long it lasts, but pain of the same intensity and duration are equally bad, whether felt by humans or animals.
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
Almost everybody accepts that some people can be killed. 'The concept of 'brain death' - the belief that people on respirators can legitimately be killed - shows that.
If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.
Even in the era of AIDS, sex raises no unique moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations about honesty, concern for others, prudence, and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact, the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by sex.)
I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.
I never thought, in my lifetime, that you'd be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.
Security is an endless race - one that you can lead but never decisively win. Yesterday's best defenses cannot fend off the attacks of today or tomorrow.
Facebook succeeded because it was about real people having a presence on the Internet. There were all these other social networking sites people had, but they were all about fictional people.
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy.
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