People From Toronto

"Blockchain technology may reduce the costs and size of government, but we’ll still need new Laws in many areas. There are technological and business model solutions to the challenges of intellectual property and rights ownership. So we should be rewriting or trashing old laws that stifle innovation through overprotection of patents. Better antitrust action must stem the trend toward monopolies so that no one overpays for, say, basic Internet or financial services."

"We look at how blockchain technologies can change what it means to be a citizen and participate in the political process, from voting and accessing social services to solving some of society’s big hairy problems and holding elected representatives accountable for the promises that got them elected."

"(...) we’re talking about building twenty-first-century companies, some that may be massive wealth creators and powerful in their respective markets. We do think enterprises will look more like networks rather than the vertically integrated hierarchies of the industrial age. As such there is an opportunity to distribute (not redistribute) wealth more democratically."

"Today, both of us are excited about the potential of this next round of the Internet. We’re enthusiastic about the massive wave of innovation that is being unleashed and its potential for prosperity and a better world. This book is our case to you to become interested, understand this next wave, and take action to ensure that the promise is fulfilled."

"We believe that blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity, and—as the network rejects the fraudulent transactions—of rejecting those early cancerous cells from a society that can grow into the unthinkable."

"In this book, you’ll read dozens of stories about initiatives enabled by this trust protocol that create new opportunities for a more prosperous world. Prosperity first and foremost is about one’s standard of living."

"Distributed ledger technology can liberate many financial services from the confines of old institutions, fostering competition and innovation. That’s good for the end user. Even when connected to the old Internet, billions of people are excluded from the economy for the simple reason that financial institutions don’t provide services like banking to them because they would be unprofitable and risky customers."

"Imagine instead of the centralized company Airbnb, a distributed application—call it blockchain Airbnb or bAirbnb—essentially a cooperative owned by its members. When a renter wants to find a listing, the bAirbnb software scans the blockchain for all the listings and filters and displays those that meet her criteria. Because the network creates a record of the transaction on the blockchain, a positive user review improves their respective reputations and establishes their identities—now without an intermediary."

"Every ten minutes, like the heartbeat of the bitcoin network, all the transactions conducted are verified, cleared, and stored in a block which is linked to the preceding block, thereby creating a chain."

"Rather than simply regulating, governments can improve the behavior of industries by making them more transparent and boosting civic engagement—not as a substitute for better regulation but as a complement to the existing systems. We believe effective regulation and, by extension, effective governance come from a multistakeholder approach where transparency and public participation are valued more highly and weigh more heavily in decision making."

"Technology doesn’t create prosperity any more than it destroys privacy."

"A fundamental change is taking place in the nature and application of technology in business, a change with profound and far-reaching implications for companies of every size and shape. A multimillion dollar research program conducted by the DMR Group, Inc., studied more than 4,500 organizations in North America, Europe, and the Far East to investigate the nature and impact of changes in technology. The synthesis and analysis of this information indicate that information technology is going through its first paradigm shift. Driven by the demands of the competitive business environment and profound changes in the nature of computers, the information age is evolving into a second era. Computing platforms in most organizations today are not able to deliver the goods for corporate rebirth. It is only through open network computing that the open networked client/server enterprise can be achieved. In nontechnical language this book shows managers and professionals how to take immediate action for the short-term benefits of the new technology while positioning their organizations for long-term growth and transformation..."

"Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship."

"Collaboration is important not just because it's a better way to learn. The spirit of collaboration is penetrating every institution and all of our lives. So learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy."

"Just as the Internet drops transaction and collaboration costs in business and government, it also drops the cost of dissent, of rebellion, and even insurrection."

"There's no such thing as sexism against men. That's because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society."

"I'm exhausted. I know that it's not unusual for nonprofits to have a life cycle shorter than a lot of people would like, but there are unique challenges when they're so entwined with an individual (me) who has become a symbol (oops), for better and for worse. I'm hoping that it will be valuable to share the reality of the bone-deep burnout that comes from consistently saying yes to the growth of Feminist Frequency, often at the expense of protecting my personal boundaries, and the workload of our team. While I've already said my piece about the harassment that myself and others have experienced over the years, reflecting on it now I can express both a sense of pride that conversations about online abuse have become part of our lexicon, and a reality that it has come at the cost of my health and wellbeing."

"Not a coincidence it's always men and boys committing mass shootings. The pattern is connected to ideas of toxic masculinity in our culture."

"It gets worse and worse, it reinforces this idea of women as sexual objects, right; there's this idea of women as playthings for their amusement ... [that] we are not meant to be treated with respect."

"The "mystical pregnancy" is one of the tropes that I loathe the most, because while other tropes represent women in stereotypical ways, this one hits us on a biological level."

"[On the Gamergate controversy] Ethics in journalism is not what's happening, in any way."

"Well, maybe the princess shouldn't be a damsel and she could save herself."

"For this video I tried to get a glimpse of Batman's rear end, but it's as if his cape is a piece of high-tech Wayne-Industries equipment designed to cover up his butt at all costs."

"When the media we create excludes girls and women, fails to depict them as leaders and innovators or treats them as little more than side-kicks, love interests and sex objects, is it any wonder that women are systematically excluded and under-represented in so many careers and leadership positions?"

"Buying 1,000 dollar shoes ... — @anitasarkeesian"

"Anime is the most disgusting, sexist, and misogynistic form of media to ever come out of Japan. Anime defiles women and caters to perverts and losers. These cartoons are corrupting teenagers and promoting rape culture."

"Shortly after the abuse of Quinn began, Anita Sarkeesian, a prominent feminist media critic and blogger, began to receive a similar wave of threats. ... When Sarkeesian released a new video in her Tropes vs Women series, the mob, already attacking Quinn, connected the two women, seeing them as part of the same 'threat', and trolls began to abuse Sarkeesian as well. After her address was found and posted online, amid a mass of renewed death and rape threats, Sarkeesian, like Quinn, was forced to flee her home."

"Princess Peach is in many ways the quintessential stock-character version of the damsel in distress."

"Why are [...] female characters in combat roles wearing high-heels? With all the fighting, running and climbing these women have to do, dressing them in high-heels is clearly a decision rooted in sexualized aesthetic pleasure rather than believability."

"If you want to get to know a character, learn about their interests, goals or desires, their butt is probably not going to give you that information."

"We can trace the "woman as reward" trope all the way back the beginning of the medium itself as [...] upon successful completion of many arcade games, players were rewarded with a related "smooch of victory" trope, so named for the kiss the hero received as a reward for rescuing a kidnapped princess. Sometimes the prize is blatant, as with the "standard hero reward" in which the king will give his daughter to the hero. On other occasions it's taken a step further by employing the parallel of "sex for victory" or "rescue sex" trope."

"Since mobile, indie and retro inspired games are built on a legacy of inequality in the medium the new wave of 80s and 90s nostalgia has brought with it a resurrection of the worst of the old-school damsel in distress stereotypes. Indeed, many of these new titles essentially function as love letters to the trope as a way of paying homage to classic games of years gone by."

"Anita Sarkeesian: For me, the big picture has always been culture change, and pop culture was just a vehicle and a medium through which cultural change can happen or it can be influenced by; so it's not actually about video games. But it's about video games, right?"

"Anita Sarkeesian: I think it's important to recognize that harassment is, as someone had mentioned, not just what is legal and illegal, right? Harassment is threats of violence, but it's also the day-to-day grind of "you're a liar", "you suck", making all these hate videos to attack us on a regular basis, and the mobs that come from those hate videos, et cetera."

"It's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects."

"Geraldine Doogue: I'm intrigued by Anita saying she had to learn about systems. You had to learn about the sociology of systems and structural change, and that was obviously quite a journey for you."

"Political science is the study of the authoritative allocation of values for a society."

"beliefs are hypotheses to be tested, not treasures to be guarded."

"How you think matters more than what you think."

"The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world."

"Philip Tetlock has just produced a study which suggests we should view expertise in political forecasting--by academics or intelligence analysts, independent pundits, journalists or institutional specialists--with the same skepticism that the well-informed now apply to stockmarket forecasting... It is the scientific spirit with which he tackled his project that is the most notable thing about his book, but the findings of his inquiry are important and, for both reasons, everyone seriously concerned with forecasting, political risk, strategic analysis and public policy debate would do well to read the book."

"“One of the lessons of age,” he said softly. “Do not waste what time you have in regret.”"

"If men were only as wise as they are clever..."

"Tristam stood and raised his glass. “May life be kind, and friends loyal. Ventures profitable, children plentiful, and age like a slow turning of the leaves in autumn; grand, beautiful and tranquil.”"

"Soldiers, Your Highness. Men trained not to think for themselves."

"The only thing of which we can be sure—time passes—everything else is vanity."

"They fear others—that is why they sought positions of power. Their greatest dream is to have a King who dances when they move the threads: and for Massenet, to marry his child to the heir of Entonne, and sit his grandson upon the throne. The ordinary desires of those who rise to such positions. In their appetites, they are not men of great originality. Though they will do enormous harm in spite of that."

"Perhaps she was not really so perfect, but he had made her so in his mind. People did this; he had seen it. As though the world of humans was created from their desires as much as their perception—an issue the empiricists tried to deal with in their natural philosophy. Although he realized this was a trivial truth, still, trying to comprehend the reality of a situation was his constant activity. He could not necessarily trust the word of ministers, who all had their own purposes; nor what his mother might think, for her own perception was colored by her desire to see people in certain ways. One did not trust the periodicals, certainly, and pamphleteers were never disinterested. Everyone seemed to see the world and events a little differently, depending on their own personal mixture of desire and pragmatism. In history there were any number of rulers whose perception of events was so far removed from reality that it led to calamity. Prince Wilam did not want to be one of those—at any cost. Even if it meant giving up the world as he desired it to be."

"Not only had he become adept at predicting the behavior of others, but he could predict his own behavior just as well. He no longer surprised himself. It was one of the saddest things about aging."

"“I have tried to find some explanation that does not rely on logic, but once the borders of rationality have been removed I cannot imagine what should take their place. How does one begin to measure? What standards should one apply?” The prince understood what she meant. Once reason was no longer your guide, you were like a man stranded in a featureless landscape. There were no landmarks to use. One direction was as likely to yield results as any other."