Latest Astra Taylor Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• We like to say the Internet is the ultimate library. But libraries are libraries because people come together and fund them through taxes. Libraries actually exist, all over the country, so why is it such a reach to imagine and to someday build a public institution that has a digital aspect to it? Of course the problem is that libraries and other public services are being defunded and are under attack, so there's a bigger progressive struggle this plays into.

  Astra Taylor

  Country, Struggle, Play

  Source: therumpus.net

• All the utopianism of the early days of the Internet seems to have dissipated. But I don't want us to lose that utopianism altogether, even if it was naïve and ill-informed and sometimes silly. Rather I want us to ask about the obstacles that are preventing the good stuff from coming to fruition. Let's investigate and think about creating something worthwhile instead of assuming that there is an inevitable track of increased centralization, consolidation, and commercialization that we can't do anything about.

  Astra Taylor

  Silly, Thinking, Creating

  Source: therumpus.net

• First we need to rethink the terms and recognize that we've imported this language from the technocratic class, from Silicon Valley, that talks about openness and transparency.

  Astra Taylor

  Class, Firsts, Needs

  Source: therumpus.net

• We haven't developed a progressive vocabulary. We say something is "public," but we just mean it's viewable online. Or we say it's "open," but we just mean it's accessible. I would like for us to think about terms critically and maybe change our vocabulary a bit. What if pubic actually meant publicly-funded, or social meant socialized.

  Astra Taylor

  Mean, Thinking, Vocabulary

  Source: therumpus.net

• I would like people to be more aware of the fact that ultimately we are paying for things, and it's not just as privacy advocates point out that we're paying with our time and our data. We're also paying with money, because the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on advertising is just factored into the cost of the goods that we buy. It's all coming out of our pocket, just in a really roundabout way.

  Astra Taylor

  Data, People, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was shocked when I tried to articulate this to someone who had posted the film and asked them to remove it for a few months, and I actually told them that after that they could put it back up and they were just completely unwilling to compromise - you'd think I was Rupert Murdoch or something.

  Astra Taylor

  Thinking, Months, Compromise

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's very complicated. There's been this broader mechanism, an industry, which wants people to use free services, from the old days of advertising-supported papers and magazines, to ad-supported free television.

  Astra Taylor

  People, Want, Use

  Source: therumpus.net

• It wasn't that people wanted things for free and asked for advertising to fund it - it's that these companies wanted to amass an audience whose "eyeballs" they could sell, and they gave people things for free to do that. Free services and content has been foisted upon us because there wasn't the will power to explore other options.

  Astra Taylor

  People, Advertising, Eyeballs

  Source: therumpus.net

• One thing that's important to point out is that this kind of populism has a long and mixed history. It's part of this tradition of problematic anti-elitism where the elites are always the liberal class - the intellectuals, the professors, the artists - and not the economic elites. Why are we so mad and aggrieved at newspaper editors but not at corporate executives? I think we need to look more at the latter, at economic elites.

  Astra Taylor

  Thinking, Artist, Editors

  Source: therumpus.net

• One consequence of this is that people are expected to make it on their own by chasing clicks or building a brand. What a diminished vision that is.

  Astra Taylor

  People, Vision, Building

  Source: therumpus.net

• As an individual navigating this reality, you have to make choices to survive. Sometimes you happily work for free if it's something you love and believe in. I'm not categorically saying that working for free is bad. I'm just looking at the broader implications of it, and also challenge this idea - and again, this is an argument made by certain people in the tech world - that amateurs are automatically more pure and will triumph over stodgy professionals.

  Astra Taylor

  Believe, Reality, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

• I try to look at the evolution of these utopian claims. In the late '60s there was an assumption that the wealth generated by industry would be taxed and then put into social programs and it would provide a baseline of stability that would allow people to have the time for self-expression; and that social contract has eroded over the last four decades and now it's every person for themselves.

  Astra Taylor

  Expression, Self, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• Look back on the utopian dreams of the previous century, or even the century before that, where people thought machines would ultimately give us a quality of life where our needs would be taken care of so we could all basically be artists together in the evening, after we had fished, hunted, raised cattle - or whatever it was Marx imagined for us.

  Astra Taylor

  Dream, Taken, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

• To go from the vision that we would all be free to express ourselves creatively because our material needs were being met, to this reality where nobody has money, people are unemployed, and the machines are harnessed by the lucky guys who Facebook or Google and we're supposed to be happy just to contribute content to their site.

  Astra Taylor

  Reality, People, Guy

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think somebody who is more self-reflective should ask why they personally aren't going on that path. If amateurism is so great, why didn't you stay one? You have to look at the larger economy, a backdrop of unemployment; it's shitty out there.

  Astra Taylor

  Thinking, Self, Unemployment

  Source: therumpus.net

• One thing I point out is, a lot of people tooting the horn of amateurism, actually, these people were professionals. Some are professors who are employed full time. Others are marketers or business consultants.

  Astra Taylor

  People, Professors, Horns

  Source: therumpus.net

• There's something odd about telling people, artists, that they need to work for free to be pure while you're sitting there getting a salary that ultimately is paid by a generation of young people going deeply into debt for their education.

  Astra Taylor

  Artist, People, Salary

  Source: therumpus.net

• On the one hand, I'm a kind of crazy anarchist-sympathizer with a hippie background, so this sounds pretty good to me. Make something for the love of it! But the reality is so much more complicated.

  Astra Taylor

  Crazy, Hippie, Reality

  Source: therumpus.net

• There was all this enthusiasm about amateurism and the idea that people could now just make videos in their bedroom, or blog news stories and share it online, and isn't this great? Now we can do it just for the love of it and not try to be professionals, corrupted by careerism.

  Astra Taylor

  News Stories, Ideas, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I feel like we're stuck in the former mode of reacting because that's what gains traction in Washington. But I really believe we need a robust public good argument. Net neutrality is not just about creating the next Instagram or Farmville or whatever.

  Astra Taylor

  Believe, Creating, Needs

  Source: therumpus.net

• I work for free all the time, as a writer but also as an activist. The decisions we have to make as individuals are really fraught but also can be really wonderful and we're all navigating this reality to the best of our abilities. But, again, I wanted to take a step back and look at the broader context.

  Astra Taylor

  Reality, Decision, Looks

  Source: therumpus.net

• We've been criticizing these superficial aspects, like whether we are all more distracted. We really need to articulate a defense, a critique, that merges awareness of the technology with a more traditional, progressive, left-wing critique of the market.

  Astra Taylor

  Technology, Wings, Needs

  Source: therumpus.net

• Ultimately, the current argument is "not having net neutrality will hurt innovation," and you can make that argument, but I would rather make the public good argument, which is not just about innovation or nurturing new companies that will add to the nation's GDP, it's actually about creating a democratic public sphere.

  Astra Taylor

  Hurt, Gdp, Creating

  Source: therumpus.net

• The market won't let us treat all data equally because there's a potential to make huge gobs of money not doing that. In the United States of America, people will pay to be first unless we do something to stop them. We don't have defenses built in because we haven't been investing in criticism that would help us mount a defense. I

  Astra Taylor

  Data, America, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• One of the big myths about people growing up is that they are "digital natives;" that just because they've been raised with the Internet - that you're very adept at using the app on your phone - it doesn't mean you have any idea about how the Internet actually works.

  Astra Taylor

  Growing Up, Mean, Phones

  Source: therumpus.net