A quote by James Madison that is carved into marble at the Library of Congress:
“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
James Madison, letter to William T. Barry, August 4, 1822
Howard Rheingold:
"The answer to any question is available anywhere within a second or too — but it’s up to the inquirer to evaluate the validity of the answer. Virtual communities, smart mobs, collective intelligence, social production, enable millions of people to do things together in the physical world that they were never before able to do. Tech-savvy teenagers invent billion dollar industries and new ways of seeking information and socializing. Others organize revolutions. Know-how is at the core of all these new phenomena, whether they are used for good or ill. So digital literacies of attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and network smarts constitute a critical uncertainty. The answer to “is this stuff any good for us” is, I strongly believe: “It depends on what people know, and how many of them know it.” Just as the decades after Gutenberg’s invention saw the expansion of the literate population from thousands to millions, we’re seeing the diffusion of new literacies that are already changing the world more profoundly than print did in its first decades."
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