Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I want to talk about privacy, the quality of the information you receive, whether it's neutral or commercial or pointed, bringing consciousness to the lack of neutrality in the algorithms.
I absolutely don't want to suggest that women are unreliable because we're mothers - on the contrary. But the question of who brings up the kids has a material effect on all women's careers.
We now have powerful technology, which allows us a voice across boundaries, which was unimaginable at the time of the Greenham Protest, a protest that pre-dates the Internet and the mobile phone.
At 99 and after a long stay in a nursing home, the death of legendary photographer Eve Arnold was hardly a surprise - though she may have been just a little annoyed to quit a few months short of 100.
A white woman with a camera in the Devadasi belt of Karnataka is not inconspicuous... it took time for these women to believe that I was not an official, carrying the threat of fine and imprisonment.
From the moment I went to Hollywood for the first time, I was accused by various people of selling out. So I feel I've done my sell-out films already. I've sold everything! I've sold every piece of soul I ever had!
Girls from poor families of the 'untouchable,' or lower, caste are 'married' to Yellamma as young as four. No longer allowed to marry a mortal, they are expected to bestow their entire lives to the service of the goddess.
The idea of the Internet as sort of open and democratic and free and with no hierarchy, the libertarian beginnings as it were, with peer-to-peer networks... I'd sort of like for everyone to just admit that we're beyond that now.
I've lost count of the plane tickets I've had in my pocket for people's weddings and other celebrations which I've had to tear up because I was making a film. How many things like that can you miss and still be in people's lives?
The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central - but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India.
I had a sort of classic moment when a friend of mine rang up and said she'd just been to a funeral, and in the middle of the eulogy, this kid had taken out the phone and had a whole proper text conversation - while everyone was weeping!
I've walked down the street with Madonna, and I've walked down the street with Colin Firth, and it was a little bit more... with Madonna they were a little rougher, but they were all there for Colin. It was amazing. Women adore him. They swoon.
This idea of the digital native in the bedroom taking down a fascist regime and building a billion-dollar company is a very attractive image, but actually, if you look at the research, young people are on the lowest rung of digital opportunity.
Everything serious in the world is well approached by humour. It's a powerful and often quite subversive tool. I suppose there is an argument that could be made against me for being frivolous, but I do think a laugh is a very generous thing to give.
I think that stories, and the telling of stories, are the foundations of human communication and understanding. If children all over the country are watching films, asking questions and telling their stories, then the world will eventually be a better place.
On telly, there's been a move towards entertainment - with some very high-powered, fast-moving dramas. Then we have the Internet, where we get our information but it's all in bite-size pieces. I think the documentary, as a form, actually speaks to what's missing.
For me, trying to articulate the world to help people see it in a way they haven't seen it before is hugely important. Sometimes, you have to take something that is completely inexplicable and say, 'Look, here is the beating heart of something you must understand.'
I once gave a talk at a girls' school and, once I'd finished, 29 out of the 30 girls wanted to be film directors. I think that's where we need to get girls interested in making films. We need to give them the idea that they can, that it's one of the things on their horizon.
In 1982, fellow film student Amanda Richardson and I went to Greenham Common for the day - to see what was going on and to shoot some video. The day turned into a weekend, the weekend into seven months, and the dozens of hours of footage turned into a film - 'Carry Greenham Home.'
The Internet has crept up on us, and we need to know what it is and start looking at it. We have to decide which bits we want, which bits we don't, and how we're going to use them - and how we're going to put pressure on the people who deliver these goods to deliver what we really want.
We think that there is this terrible idea that the kids are digital natives... and they know what they're doing, but all the evidence says that they're hanging around going, 'Where are you, I'm here, can I post my picture?' They're not actually writing wikis; they're not actually listening to great poets live.
The devices that our kids use are shipped from the factory with every possible audio, visual or vibration alert switched on. Each new app, website, tweet and message adds another layer of intrusion - each intrusion is cynically designed to get a response, and each response creates an appetite for another intrusion.
Everything a teenager does, says or looks at, however transitory, contributes to an aggregated virtual self that might one day have consequences for its real-life counterpart. How many of us would keep all our relationships and reputations intact if every transgression, mistake or youthful folly was held in public view?
For most women, Greenham was a place of principle, growth and song. Often joyful, sometimes terrifying, and almost always cold. As it got harder, with constant evictions and mounting violence from a frustrated and humiliated police force, the women got more determined. It was a community with a shared purpose - to live in peace.