Howard Rheingold Quotes

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Howard Rheingold

Profession : Critic

Birth : July 7, 1947

I think e-mail petitions are an illusion. It gives people the illusion that they're participating in some meaningful political action.

Howard Rheingold

We think of them as mobile phones, but the personal computer, mobile phone and the Internet are merging into some new medium like the personal computer in the 1980s or the Internet in the 1990s.

Howard Rheingold

It's kind of astonishing that people trust strangers because of words they write on computer screens.

Howard Rheingold

The AP has only so many reporters, and CNN only has so many cameras, but we've got a world full of people with digital cameras and Internet access.

Howard Rheingold

There is an elementary level of trust that is necessary for community. You have to be able to trust that your neighbors aren't going to look into your mailbox.

Howard Rheingold

The two parts of technology that lower the threshold for activism and technology is the Internet and the mobile phone. Anyone who has a cause can now mobilize very quickly.

Howard Rheingold

On the Internet, it is assumed people are in business to sell out, not to build something they can pass along to their grandkids.

Howard Rheingold

Advertising in the past has been predicated on a mass market and a captive audience.

Howard Rheingold

Technology no longer consists just of hardware or software or even services, but of communities. Increasingly, community is a part of technology, a driver of technology, and an emergent effect of technology.

Howard Rheingold

People's behavior will change with technology. I know very few young people who can't type out a text message on their phone with one thumb, for instance.

Howard Rheingold

There's a direct relationship between how difficult it is to send a message and how strongly it is received.

Howard Rheingold

The Chinese government tried to keep a lid on the SARS crisis, but there were 160 million text messages in three days sent by Chinese citizens. These are early indications that it's going to be difficult for people who used to have control over the news to maintain that level of control.

Howard Rheingold

Mindfulness means being aware of how you're deploying your attention and making decisions about it, and not letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.

Howard Rheingold

I want to be very careful about judging and how much to generalize about the use of media being pathological. For some people, it's a temptation and a pathology; for others, it's a lifeline.

Howard Rheingold

It's more important to me to get an e-mail that says, 'I saw your page and it changed my life,' than how many hits the page got.

Howard Rheingold

Craigslist is about authenticity. Craig has paid his dues, and people respect him.

Howard Rheingold

You can't pick up the telephone and say, 'Connect me with someone else who has a kid with leukemia.'

Howard Rheingold

People move from place to place and job to job, but they no longer need to lose touch.

Howard Rheingold

Kids automatically teach each other how to use technology, but they're not going to teach each other about the history of democracy, or the importance of taking their voices into the public sphere to create social change.

Howard Rheingold

The Orwellian vision was about state-sponsored surveillance. Now it's not just the state, it's your nosy neighbor, your ex-spouse and people who want to spam you.

Howard Rheingold