When it is about technology, there is this tendency to just reject all criticism as being anti-technological and anti-modern. I think this is very unhealthy. – Evgeny Morozov
It is easy to be seen as either a genius or a crank. If you have a Ph.D., at least you somewhat lower the chances that you will be seen as a crank. – Evgeny Morozov
In Google’s world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to. – Evgeny Morozov
In reality, quitting Facebook is much more problematic than the company’s executives suggest, if only because users cannot extract all the intangible social capital they have generated on the site and export it elsewhere. – Evgeny Morozov
If my idea was just to maintain a certain lifestyle, there would be no need to get a Ph.D. But I do care very deeply about the idea side as well. – Evgeny Morozov
I’m rarely invited to start-up parties, but who cares about their trinkets and apps anyway? – Evgeny Morozov
The Egyptian experience suggests that social media can greatly accelerate the death of already dying authoritarian regimes. – Evgeny Morozov
There is this absurd assumption that the revitalisation of the public sphere is always a good thing. I think people tend to confuse ‘civic’ and ‘civil,’ and they believe that everything that is done by citizens is necessarily a good thing because you build a network, an association. – Evgeny Morozov
We need to start seeing privacy as a commons – as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer. – Evgeny Morozov
‘Solutionism’ for me is, above all, an unthinking pursuit of perfection – by means of technology – without coming to grips with the fact that imperfection is an essential feature of liberal democracy. – Evgeny Morozov
The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters. – Evgeny Morozov
If you use your smart toothbrush, the data can be immediately sent to your dentist and your insurance company, but it also allows someone from the NSA to know what was in your mouth three weeks ago. – Evgeny Morozov
I went to SXSW in 2011. God, that was awful. I mean, I only went because my publisher wanted me to promote the book and the organizers invited me and it seemed silly not to go, especially for a relatively unknown first-time author. This is just not my cup of tea; the fewer such events I do on an annual basis, the happier I feel. – Evgeny Morozov