# Quote — Heather Brooke, The Revolution will be Digitised

> Over the past year I've thought a lot about censorship, surveillance and regulation of the Internet. Is it necessary? Is it really so dangerous to allow individuals an ability to associate and communicate freely? Certainly there exists a criminal minority who take advantage of the freedom of the Internet, but no one is arguing that crimes shouldn't be prosecuted. This is about allowing the vast majority of people to communicate without state intervention. Despite all the dire warnings, the prophesies of doom and destruction that were foretold by the Pentagon, the US State Department, Hosni Mubarak, even English High Court Judge Eady, I look at the fallout from all that was published in 2010, all the breaches to establishment power that occurred through a networked citizenry- and the good clearly outweighs the bad. From the uprising in Iceland to the ousting of dictators in the Middle East, free speech has fundamentally changed the world for the good.

- Author: [Heather Brooke](https://www.leafyquotes.com/heather-brooke.md)
- Book: [The Revolution will be Digitised](https://www.leafyquotes.com/heather-brooke/the-revolution-will-be-digitised.md)
- Page: 236
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heather_Brooke#The_Revolution_Will_Be_Digitised:_Dispatches_From_the_Information_War,_1st_Edition) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/heather-brooke/the-revolution-will-be-digitised/over-the-past

## More from this book

> At a time of information overload, good journalists are more important then ever. They serve as the public's hired guns to collect information from various sources and challenge it for the purpose of distilling down what is important and true. They-signpost issues that are worthy of our attention. In the past when we bought newspapers we were paying for that particular newspaper with its content- a bundle of news and entertainment. In the digital age we're buying the carriage (e.g. the Internet access) and readers decide later what information they want to view over that carrier.

p. 70 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/heather-brooke/the-revolution-will-be-digitised/at-a-time.md)

> We are at an extraordinary moment in human history: never before has the possibility of true democracy been so close to realisation. At the cost of publishing and duplication has dropped to near zero, a truly free press, and a truly informed public, becomes a reality. A new Information Enlightment is dawning where knowledge flows freely, beyond national boundaries. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography, replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency. In this new Enlightenment it isn't just scientific truths that are the goal, but discovering truths about the way we live, about politics and power.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/heather-brooke/the-revolution-will-be-digitised/we-are-at-an-extraordinary.md)

> Authoritarians offer citizens a deal: if we hand over our freedom, they will guarantee certainty and safety. This might have been possible in a closed society with little interaction between people, but it is a false promise in a knowledge economy where citizens are interconnected. If the best chaos theorists can't model the weather beyond a week, how does the National Security Agency think it can predict which of us will turn into a terrorist? If our intelligence agencies persist in monopolising knowledge we will see continued intelligence failures.

p. 236 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/heather-brooke/the-revolution-will-be-digitised/authoritarians-offer-citizens.md)