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Howard Rheingold in Design for Community:

Ultimately, I believe the complexities of the regulatory and political battles boil down to whether the people who use tomorrow's technologies will be smart mobs or marching morons, or, more simply, whether we'll be users (with the power to create not just content and markets but entirely new media) or consumers (with the power to choose between 500 brands offered by the same three vendors, with little or no power to create our own cultural products). More than ever, the real key is human knowledge that can lead to collective action -- how people appropriate or adapt technologies to their own needs, not just passively accept the default capabilities of the technologies and the needs of those who devise and sell them. Right now is the time to understand what is really at stake, to spread the word, and to use what power we still have to act intelligently on behalf of our own future.

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