If you’ve got 38 minutes to spare, or even 10 or 20, check out yesterday’s episode of “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” which featured an insightful and engaging interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. Lots of topics were covered, but what I found most interesting was about 8 minutes into the interview when Stone discusses the role and responsibility of communication services like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc. He brings up some intriguing ideas about what it means for these tech players to be “neutral:
“It’s important for us to remain a neutral technology provider, but we do believe that the open exchange of information is very important and can have a positive impact on the world.”
Of course, as Stone elaborates, this comes with the caveat that the service could be used for “ill”:
“While we don’t always agree with a lot of the information that’s being transmitted on Twitter, we still feel strongly that it should be allowed to flow, to be transmitted.”
Later in the interview, Stone talks about social networks more broadly, discussing their global significance in deep terms:
“People all around the world are realizing that we’re not necessarily citizens of a particular state or a particular country, but citizens of the world…I think that the Internet and social media tools are making the world a smaller place and they’re strengthening humanity…and I think that’s an incredibly important thing because this kind of global alignment of thought among individuals around the world – think of what we can do in the years to come if we are this connected and if we are kind of thinking along the same lines…”
Whoa. Talk about a double-rainbow.






