Jonathan Zittrain

“Attacks on Internet sites and infrastructure, and the compromise of secure information, pose a particularly tricky problem because it is usually impossible to trace an attack back to its instigator.”

“Facebook draws from the public and public-interest sphere, a simultaneously bold and modest step towards acknowledging that our new networked technologies deeply affect our lives in ways not always captured or best shaped by the typical template of consumer and seller.”

“Instead of using new technologies to preserve for ready discovery material that might in the past never have been stored, or deleting everything as soon as possible, we can develop systems that place sensitive information beyond reach until a specified amount of time has passed or other conditions are met.”

“Enterprising law-enforcement officers with a warrant can flick a distant switch and turn a standard mobile phone into a roving mic or eavesdrop on occupants of cars equipped with travel assistance systems.”

“One repressive state after another has had to face the dilemma of wanting abundant Internet for economic advancement, while ruing the ways in which its citizens can become empowered to express themselves fearlessly.”

“Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don't like.”

“All sorts of factors contribute to what Facebook or Twitter present in a feed, or what Google or Bing show us in search results. Our expectation is that those intermediaries will provide open conduits to others' content and that the variables in their processes just help yield the information we find most relevant.”

“Despite outsiders being invited to write software, the iPhone thus remains tightly tethered to its vendor - the way that the Kindle is controlled by Amazon.”

“The ability to make new work from old work - especially if that new work is different enough that it doesn't dent the market for the old work - is something that benefits all creators, since so few can claim not to have a giant or 10 supporting them underneath.”

“The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you - and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy.”

“TV broadcasting is owned, in the sense that governments around the world have asserted power over the airwaves that permeate their territories, deciding who can use what bandwidth and why - and those with licenses then, with exceptions determined by regulators, decide what to broadcast.”

“I don't know how much thought is behind it, but it seems to me highly effective the way that Facebook will let somebody tag a photo with a friend's name, then others who are a friend of that friend can perhaps immediately see the photo, and the friend, in the meantime, has a chance to wander back and un-tag it.”

“Technologically, the Internet works thanks to loose but trusted connections among its many constituent parts, with easy entry and exit for new ISPs or new forms of expanding access.”

“The Internet is a collective hallucination: one of the best humanity has ever generated.”

“People may be due the benefits of a democratic electoral process. But in the United States, content curators appropriately have a First Amendment right to present their content as they see fit.”

“I'm interested in harnessing the good will and distributed power of people, including novices.”

“Content zips around the Internet thanks to code - programming code. And code is subject to intellectual property laws.”

“Being closed to outsiders made the iPhone reliable and predictable.”

“The last refuge of privacy cannot be placed solely in law or technology. It must repose in both, and a thoughtful combination of the two can help us thread a path between having all our secrets trivially discoverable and preserving nothing for our later selves for fear of that discovery.”

“Citizens identify with something larger than themselves - if one's country is attacked, it can feel like a personal attack in a way that a fellow bank customer's account theft does not feel like a personal invasion.”