Joichi Ito Quotes

When there is a huge force pressing down on freedoms, sub-cultures with more creativity and power are likely to form.

We talked about the Internet and Wikipedia and how facts and history are being collectively created online.

We have a long way to go before we are able to hear the voices of everyone on earth, but I believe that providing voices and building bridges is essential for the World Peace we all wish for.

We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation.

Upholding human rights is not merely compatible with fighting terrorism, it is essential.

There was a very convincing argument made that the extremists have won and the aggression is now supported by the majority, therefore fighting until surrender was the only alternative.

The US constitution’s First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with – more speech and debate, not censorship.

The most important thing I learned in school was how to touch type.

The idea of trying to fight against extremism was written off as naive.

Now that our media companies and it appears are policies are traded for cash, what is there to check the continuing consolidation of power and diminishing of democracy?

Most creative work is a process of people passing ideas and inspirations from the past into the future and adding their own creativity along the way.

Money creates a power relationship between the payer and the payee.

Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific.

It would be easy to define terrorism as attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law forbids attacks against innocent non-combatants which is often the definition used for terrorism.

Internet penetration in Italy is quite low and the Berlusconi media machine controls most of what people see.

In a world where discovery is more important than delivery, it’s the people who find, remix and direct attention to old stuff that should be rewarded, not the people who deliver it or sit on it waiting for someone to show up.

If we destroy human rights and rule of law in the response to terrorism, they have won.

 

I talked about the barriers created by monopolies. I said that it was the role of government to break up these monopolies and that we couldn’t do it alone.

 

I noticed that democracy was broken and tried to work on fixing that in Japan. Then I realized that it was broken all over the place and decided to work on that too.

I just believe that the cost of marketing is going to increase and the cost of delivery is going to decrease as the Net gets stronger and mass media gets weaker.