The point about digitization, just to explain what I mean by that, is the way that information is no longer a physical commodity. It doesn't have a mass like it used to. So it used to be that if you wanted to leak a bunch of documents, you physically had to carry away these huge boxes of documents and then you had to physically photocopy them somehow. And they had this physical mass, and it was through that mass that they could be controlled by people in power. When information is digitized, it loses that mass for the most part. It becomes almost ephemeral, it's like an idea; it's like a thought. And it spreads and it can be shared almost instantaneously. So you can take that, and then you combine it with the internet, which is this web in which everybody is talking to each other and sharing information. And you've got the makings of what I think is a digital revolution, which nobody quite knows how to handle it, what to do with it.

I think we’re living through a very unique moment where again it proves that information is power. It's a completely chaotic time where technology has helped make facts disputable, eroded truth, and crippled trust.

Technology revolutionaries succeeded not because of some collectivist vision that seeks to regulate “fairness”, “neutrality”, “privacy” or “competition” through coercive state actions, or that views the Internet and technology as a vast commons that must be freely available to all, but rather because of the same belief as America’s Founders who understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom itself. Technology revolutionaries succeed because of the decentralized nature of the Internet, which defies government control. As a consequence, decentralization has unlocked individual self-empowerment, entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation and the creation of new markets in ways never before imagined in human history...Around the world, the real threat to Internet freedom comes not from bad people or inefficient markets -- we can and will always route around them -- but from governments' foolish attempts to manage and control innovation. And it is not just the tyrannies we must fear. The road away from freedom is paved with good intentions.

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.

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.

What is truly revolutionary about molecular biology in the post-Watson-Crick era is that it has become digital.

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

Digitalisation opens up new possibilities for a better quality of life of the citizens through agreater number of services, for services that are cheaper, for providing more accessible information and knowledge, for people to inter-connect. Although it is often connected with technology, digitalisation is much more than that, because it provides opportunities for new andbetter-paid jobs. Digitalisation may increase our export and, even more importantly, it is ourchance to stop the brain drain and even reverse the trend.

What I call the ‘information war’, where through the control of information our society is being radically transformed.

The information revolution will lead us through a knowledge revolution to the wisdom revolution.

Leaks have happened before. They are not new. But the industrial scale of leaking made possible through the digitisation of information and the ability to communicate instantly across the globe - that is new. If it is to be revolutionary, however, we need a model for a new type of politics.

To be a revolutionary is to be in possession of an imagination capable of leaping across the frontier of the familiar to envision a new order in which what is gained eclipses the ill-serving comforts of what is lost.

What I've seen from being in this access to information field for so long is that it used to be quite a niche interest, and it's gone mainstream. Everybody, increasingly, around the world, wants to know about what people in power are doing. They want a say in decisions that are made in their name and with their money. It's this democratization of information that I think is an information enlightenment, and it has many of the same principles of the first Enlightenment. It's about searching for the truth, not because somebody says it's true, "because I say so." No, it's about trying to find the truth based on what you can see and what can be tested. That, in the first Enlightenment, led to questions about the right of kings, the divine right of kings to rule over people, or that women should be subordinate to men, or that the Church was the official word of God.

What is truly revolutionary about molecular biology in the post-Watson-Crick era is that it has become digital...the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.' -Richard Dawkins