Howard Rheingold quotes

Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping. (Howard Rheingold)
The Amish communities of Pennsylvania, despite the retro image of horse-drawn buggies and straw hats, have long been engaged in a productive debate about the consequences of technology.
Howard Rheingold
Like most modern Americans, I assume individuality is not only a fundamental value, but a goal in life, an art form.
Howard Rheingold
It's kind of astonishing that people trust strangers because of words they write on computer screens.
Howard Rheingold
Humans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.
Howard Rheingold
Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.
Howard Rheingold
Its not a global village, but we're in a highly interconnected globe.
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
Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern and create.
Howard Rheingold
We are moving rapidly into a world in which the spying machinery is built into every object we encounter.
Howard Rheingold
A lot of people use collaborative technologies badly, then abandon them. They aren't 'plug-and-play.' The invisible part is the social skill necessary to use them. (Howard Rheingold)
I think there are two aspects to smart environments. One is information embedded in places and things. The other is location awareness, so that devices we carry around know where we are. When you combine those two, you get a lot of possibilities.
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
When designers replaced the command line interface with the graphical user interface, billions of people who are not programmers could make use of computer technology.
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
I think e-mail petitions are an illusion. It gives people the illusion that they're participating in some meaningful political action.
Howard Rheingold
Any virtual community that works, works because people put in some time.
Howard Rheingold
Some digital natives are extraordinarily savvy.
Howard Rheingold
You can't pick up the telephone and say, 'Connect me with someone else who has a kid with leukemia.'
Howard Rheingold
Young voters are crucial. The trend over recent years has been for them to drift away. So anything that gets young voters interested in the electoral process not only has an immediate effect, but has an effect for years and years.
Howard Rheingold
It used to be that if your automobile broke, the teenager down the street with the wrench could fix it. Now you have to have sophisticated equipment that can deal with microchips. We're entering a world in which the complexity of the devices and the system of interconnecting devices is beyond our capability to easily understand. (Howard Rheingold)
Personal computers were created by some teenagers in garages because the, the wisdom of the computer industry was that people didn't want these little toys on their desk.
Howard Rheingold
Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control.
Howard Rheingold
Inexpensive phones and pay-as-you go services are already spreading mobile phone technology to many parts of that world that never had a wired infrastructure.
Howard Rheingold
A forecasting game is a kind of simulation, a kind of scenario, a kind of teleconference, a kind of artifact from the future - and more - that enlists the participants as 'first-person forecasters.'
Howard Rheingold