Friday One-Liners

Just some odds and ends I have come across this week, united by a common theme.

Vladimir Putin, upon hearing calls for officials to examine complaints on the Internet about vote rigging in the recent regional elections: “On the Internet 50 percent is porn material. Why should we refer to the Internet?“

Figure skater Oksana Domnina reacting to the news that her routine with Maxim Shabalin imitating Australian aborigines had caused offense and protests:  “We didn’t know anything about it. (…) We researched a lot of information on the internet. It’s just from many thousands of years ago and it wasn’t our goal [to be authentic].“

Sec. of Stat Hillary Clinton:  “Just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns, or nuclear power can either energize a city or destroy it, modern information networks and the technologies they support can be harnessed for good or for ill.“

Evgeny Morozov reacting to Clinton’s speech:  “The view of authoritarianism that she articulated in the speech smackedof a memo written by a bunch of confused Kremlinologists. I guess nosane American politician would ever acknowledge that information couldbe the opium of the masses, but acting as if today’s Russians,Iranians, or Chinese are totally cut off frominformation/travel/globalization is kind of silly.“

Elina Bilevskaya as quoted by Paul Goble:  “In the not distant future, the use of virtual technologies and alsoblogs and social networks will be able not only to form relations tothe representatives of the ruling class but also exert real influenceon the outcome of voting in the elections.”

Esther Dyson, boardmember of Yandex:  “So while Google is unlikely to re-enter China for the foreseeablefuture, the company has improved its negotiating position in whateverother disputes it might have in the future, and it has won support fromthe U.S. government.“

Sports blog Deadspin, commenting on the Russian figure skaters’ aborigines debacle which was studied from video clips posted online:  “But if we’re just going by YouTube, I’d like to propose a routineincorporating those traditional aspects of Russian culture: soccerhooligans, a guy barely dodging a runaway bus, and those students whoturned their dorm into a giant Tetris game.“