The WikiLeaks case shines a bright light on all sorts of relationships, such as those between journalism and activism, secrecy and transparency, government and the media, national security and freedom of speech (not again!), and watchdogs and terrorists. The Times, they are a-changin’.
Some of the questions that leap out:
- Is Julian Assange a visionary or a criminal? Should he get a Nobel or a lynching?
- What about those trying to muffle him? Are they patriots or reactionaries?
- And the hacker backlash? Are DDoS attacks free speech, or denial of free speech?
- Who has been harmed? Has anything really important been disclosed?
- What does this incident tell us about democracy? privacy? media? corporations?
- What is the real battle here? Should information be shared or censored?
- Is this a taste of the future of news?
- Do we have any more privacy? Could we all be happy in glass houses?
- Bank of America seems to be the next WikiLeak target; then what?
- Is this incident spawning many more WikiLeaks?
- Has this incident dampened private conversations, or improved them?
- What are the odd side effects?
- Might the actions so far be the start of something much larger? Is cyberwar in the air?
- Or are we overreacting? Will this all make society better?
You can find all these articles in context in my online Brain (takes a moment for app to load):
Here’s a link to that spot in my Brain on the Web.
If you have time, read Milton Mueller’s piece, and watch the #PDFleaks meeting that took place on Saturday (replay here).
Other resources of note:
- A rough cut of a Swedish documentary about Assange and WikiLeaks
(I’m hosting the weekly Yi-Tan call about WikiLeaks on Monday Dec. 13 at 10:30am Pacific. To get the dial-in information, please write me.)
Here’s an in-depth look at Assange and WikiLeaks by the Finn Brunton that’s well worth the read:
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187&editorial_id=29463
It’s got this really nice summation of what WikiLeaks is really about: