The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena. – Jaron Lanier
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future. – Jaron Lanier
It is impossible to work in information technology without also engaging in social engineering. – Jaron Lanier
I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because its too expensive to change the interface. – Jaron Lanier
A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot…. We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship,” The Conduct of Life, 1860