The Internet in the 21st Century is as important to our future as highways were in the 20th Century. Like a highway, the Internet must remain free and open for all - not determined by the highest bidders.
Interpretation
The Internet is essential for future progress, akin to the role of highways in the past century.
In this quote, Chuck Schumer emphasizes the critical importance of the Internet in the modern world, paralleling it with the impact that highways had in the previous century. He advocates for the principle that access to the Internet should be universally free and not subject to corporate control, highlighting the need for an open digital landscape that fosters innovation and equality.
In practice
In a speech about digital rights, this quote can emphasize the importance of net neutrality.
There are two tests in life, more important than any other test. On Monday morning, when you wake up, do you feel in the pit of your stomach you can't wait to go to work? And when you're ready to go home Friday afternoon, do you say, 'I can't wait to go home?'
The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control.
New technologies, however remarkable they might seem, are fundamentally just tools made by people for people.
Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.
The upside of web-based journalism is that everybody gets a chance. The downside is that everybody gets a chance.
The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.
I have no problem with technological solutions to social problems. The key question for me is, 'Who gets to implement them?' and, 'What kinds of politics of reform do technological solutions smuggle through the back door?'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.