Roger Scruton:

Pre-emptive kitsch is the first link in a chain. The artist pretends to take himself seriously, the critics pretend to judge his product and the modernist establishment pretends to promote it. At the end of all this pretense, someone who cannot perceive the difference between the real thing and the fake decides that he should buy it.

Christopher Glazek:

The collector class has traditionally come from the very top of the wealth spectrum and has included people looking to trade money for social prestige by participating in the art world's stately rituals. Over the last few years, though, a new class of speculators has emerged with crasser objectives: They are less interested in flying to Basel to attend a dinner than in riding the economic wave that has caused the market for emerging contemporary art to surge in the past decade.

Paul M. Barrett:

The Burford investment -- a form of speculation known as litigation finance -- was the wave of the future, he argued. Hedge funds were putting millions into major litigation in exchange for shares of recoveries.

James Comey:

In 2003 there were 6.3 billion human beings on the earth and 500 million devices connected to the Internet. In 2010 there were 6.8 billion people on the earth and 12.5 billion devices connected to the Internet.

Steven Levy:

The Internet is a vast lawn with billions of mole-holes.

James Comey:

The Internet is the most dangerous parking lot imaginable.

Mark Foulon:

It has become clear that Internet access in itself is a vulnerability that we cannot mitigate. We have tried incremental steps and they have proven insufficient.

Mitch Kapor, in 1993:

Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted.

James Comey:

The first thing to do though is adopt an attitude of humility. I think we stand in the single greatest transformation in human history and anybody who stands here and says, "I know what five years from now looks like, I know what 10 years from now looks like, and therefore the FBI should be deployed and equipped in the following way," is arrogant and, in my view, foolish.

Mike Rogers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman:

If anybody in the federal government tells you that they've got this figured out in terms of how to respond to an aggressive cyber attack, then tell me their names, because they shouldn't be there.

Mike Loukides:

Whatever the future holds, it will be impossible to hold it back. And it won't be the modernist fantasy of the Jetsons. It might be unfortunate that the dream of progress turned out to be a fantasy, but we're better off building for a harsh reality than pretending that our fantasies will save us. Postmodern computing is about creating the tools for that disenchanted reality.

Mike Loukides:

We used to say that a computer only did what you told it to do, and exactly what you told it to do. While that's still true, to an extent, we're now building systems that are massively distributed, that run on hardware that we don't control and, in many cases, we can't even locate. Our older model of computing -- you tell the computer what to do, and if there's a bug, it's your fault -- now strikes us as naive, and possibly the last gasp of futuristic optimism.

Nicholas Carr:

Seeking convenience, speed, and efficiency, we rush to off-load work to computers without reflecting on what we might be sacrificing as a result.

FBI:

During remarks at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham University in New York City, Director James Comey reiterated that North Korea was responsible for the cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Comey cited the recent intrusion against Sony as proof of the seriousness of the cyber threat facing the U.S. and said the FBI and the intelligence community have a "very high confidence" that North Korea was responsible for the hack. He added that the Bureau and its partners were using a range of sensitive tools and techniques to arrive at that conclusion.

Diego Gambetta:

In the inscrutable case, the overall truth about a state of affairs is not known by anyone.

James Comey:

I find that in all things cyber there's a lot of nodding and I worry there's not a lot of understanding behind the nodding at times.

Sjon:

I think the myths are coming back, because they exist in that field of human experience, where the real and the unreal simply exist together, and in a way you can only explain the real through what is supposed to be unreal.

Mark Danner:

We're in this surrealistic world, in which ... we're seeing a public effort at disinformation spreading throughout the country, through all the media outlets ...

David Sedaris:

It's ridiculous how often you have to say hello on Emerald Isle. Passing someone on the street is one thing, but you have to do it in stores as well, not just to the employees who greet you at the door but to your fellow-shoppers in aisle three.

Liliana Segura:

The truth is, yes, even "hello" can feel like an unwelcome demand.

Jonathan Franzen:

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there's a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?

John Wood:

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

Diego Gambetta:

The effect on military and political strategy caused by the shock and emotions after 9/11 have been underestimated, while it is highly plausible to think that they colored the cognitive processes that led to the new strategic mindset. The cocktail of notions that were chosen -- evil, war, global, unprecedented, unknown unknowns -- does not strike me as the product of cool reflection.

Mark Danner:

The use of these [torture] techniques let [us] alleviate [our] own anxiety. And [our] anxiety was based on complete misinformation. We translated our ignorance into their pain. That in a nutshell is the story the Senate report tells. Our ignorance, our anxiety, our guilt, into their pain.

Eric Fair:

Most Americans haven't read the report. Most never will.

Marc A. Thiessen:

Despite the best efforts of Holder and Feinstein, the CIA has been cleared both by the Department of Justice and by the court of public opinion.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Power, decoupled from responsibility, is what we seek. The citizen who needs to look away generally finds a reason.

David Cole:

In July 2013, the Pew Research Center reported that for the first time since it started asking the question in 2004, more Americans expressed concern that counter-terrorism measures were infringing their civil liberties than worried that the government was not doing enough to keep them safe.

The Economist:

... the Pew Research Centre, a self-described "fact tank" based in Washington ...

Mark Burgman:

Beware the base-rate fallacy.

Diego Gambetta:

The importance of establishing the real size and kind of threat we are facing remains crucial for fighting it effectively -- hitting the right targets, picking the right means, avoiding overreactions. It is also important because the bigger and nastier the threat is (or is thought to be) the harsher are the infringements to civil liberties that can be justified and accepted by the public. One way to defend our liberties is to be alert to the forces that could exaggerate and distort the threat.

The difference between contemplating preemptive war and jumping at shadows can become perilously thin.

One would hope that the intelligence services can square the circle between over- and under-estimation, tell us what the real risks are, who are the enemies, and make the unknowns known. Yet there is growing evidence that even well-meaning spies can incur all sorts of troubles, especially under post-9/11 pressures. An increase in the demand for secret information creates an increase in supply, but the supply of inaccurate information grows faster than that of accurate information.

If we work on the principle that we do not know what we do not know, anything can look large enough to merit the intrusion of the authorities and the trampling of liberty.

We should of course distrust politicians who lie and exaggerate the facts to suit their agendas. But the questionable rationality of the post-9/11 mindset and of the strategic approach it has induced ... poses far more serious and consequential problems for all of us than propaganda or low-level conspiracies.

James Mitchell:

There was intense pressure for results. There was a tremendous amount of pressure not to let other Americans die.

Hans de Zwart:

The people watching are, in some ways, imprisoned too.

Stoya:

The redeeming hope for 2015 is that even more of us will have stared into the immeasurable depths of suck that the world holds. We will have come to terms with the fact that things do not magically become better. Fewer will waste time standing around with our hands in the air saying, "My God, how could things possibly be this bad?"

Shikha Dalmia:

The mindset that sowed this poisonous fruit will make it difficult to root it out.

Rebecca Brock:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

Robert Mendick, and Robert Verkaik:

Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.

But concern was raised over the practicalities of making it a legal requirement for staff to inform on toddlers.

Hans de Zwart:

Most of us aren't fully aware of how truly all-encompassing the current surveillance infrastructure is and how quickly we are making it larger still. We often don't realize how much the technology can already do today and how we are letting it play a large part in our lives.

Dmitry Kieselev, the Kremlin's chief propagandist:

Information war is now the main type of war.

Thomas Ricks:

Maxwell Taylor made a habit out of saying not what he knew to be true but instead what he thought should be said.

Mark Ames:

The problem was that Pike asked the right questions -- and that led him to some very wrong answers, as far as the powers that be were concerned.

Robert Herritt:

Much of Luciano Floridi's work is motivated by the idea that in choosing the rules that govern the flow and control of information, we are constructing a new environment in which future generations will live. It won't be enough, he has written, to adopt "small, incremental changes in old conceptual frameworks." The situation demands entirely new ways of thinking about technology, privacy, the law, ethics, and, indeed, the nature of personhood itself.

Rukhsana Ahmad:

Captives
These, who sleep in a house,
of yellow stone
wrapped in sheets of insensitivity
tell them
to rise
and chisel the mountains.
We have to think of liberation.

Mitch Kapor, in 1993:

Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted.

Michael Mann:

We're swimming around in it, and everything is totally porous, vulnerable and accessible. And if it hasn't been targeted, that's only because somebody hasn't bothered to yet.

Steven Levy:

Probably every secret we express on the Internet -- and some secrets we don't --  is prone to exposure.

Hans de Zwart:

If your child is ignoring your calls and doesn't reply to your texts, you can use the 'Ignore no more' app. It will lock your child's phone until they call you back. This clearly shows that most surveillance is about control. Control is the reason why we take pleasure in surveilling ourselves more and more.

Robert Graham:

They aren't in the business of protection but control.

Alina Simone:

Welcome to the new ransomware economy, where hackers have a reputation to consider.

Hans de Zwart:

At a micro-level we are all Disney. The market for tracking devices for children and pets is exploding.

Dr. Laura Elizabeth Pinto and Dr. Selena Nemorin:

What is troubling is what The Elf on the Shelf represents and normalizes: anecdotal evidence reveals that children perform an identity that is not only for caretakers, but for an external authority (The Elf on the Shelf), similar to the dynamic between citizen and authority in the context of the surveillance state. By inviting The Elf on the Shelf simultaneously into their play-world and real lives, children are taught to accept or even seek out external observation of their actions outside of their caregivers and familial structures. When parents and teachers bring The Elf on the Shelf into homes and classrooms, are they preparing a generation of children to accept, not question, increasingly intrusive (albeit whimsically packaged) modes of surveillance?

Esther Perel:

When there is nothing left to hide, there is nothing left to seek.

Andrew Leonard:

The "full-disclosure future" is upon us. What happens to privacy when "wellness" becomes a condition of your employment?

Josh Dzieza:

In a Black Mirror story, technology only provides a more effective way for people to torture each other and themselves in all the usual ways, magnifying ordinary passions and insecurities to an absurd scale. This is the paranoia at the heart of Black Mirror: we're building systems the full repercussions of which we don't yet understand, and the idea of opting out of them is a myth.

Decius:

We seem to be at the beginning of a dark time.

Ezra Klein:

It seems possible that we're looking at a decade or more in which we have a political system that is essentially unable to make any forward motion on major problems. It might be able to respond to a crisis, but it cannot affirmatively legislate.

Matt Ford:

The police union's phrasing -- officers shouldn't make arrests "unless absolutely necessary" -- begs the question: How many unnecessary arrests was the NYPD making before now?

Matt Taibbi:

The NY Post is reporting that the protesting police have decided to make arrests "only when they have to." (Let that sink in for a moment. Seriously, take 10 or 15 seconds).

It's wrong to put law enforcement in the position of having to make up for budget shortfalls with parking tickets, and it's even more wrong to ask its officers to soak already cash-strapped residents of hot spot neighborhoods with mountains of summonses as part of a some stats-based crime-reduction strategy. Both policies make people pissed off at police for the most basic and understandable of reasons: if you're running into one, there's a pretty good chance you're going to end up opening your wallet.

Marco Arment:

Talking to reporters is like talking to the police: ideally, don't. You have little to gain and a lot to lose, their incentives often conflict with yours, and they have all of the power.

Matt Taibbi:

Most people, and police most of all, agree that the best use of police officers is police work. They shouldn't be collecting backdoor taxes because politicians are too cowardly to raise them, and they shouldn't be pre-emptively busting people in poor neighborhoods because voters don't have the patience to figure out some other way to deal with our dying cities.

Andy Herrmann:

You're sitting there at these committee meetings; they seem to agree with you. Yes, we have to make investments in infrastructure. Yes, we have to do these things. But then they come around and say, "Well, where are we going to get the money?" And you sort of sit to yourself and say to yourself, "Well, we elected you to figure that out."