Within few hours the wikileak contents were copied by many more sites than Wikileaks had called for. The initial 50 pages were reached quickly, reaching nearly 100 in the early evening. The sites included peoplerule.info, wikileaks.geekview.be, wikileaks.the-secret-world.info. The names of many of these sites "are program".
What is happening? Disregarding the fact what you think about Wikileaks, there seems to be something deeper going on.
It is David against Goliath. Nation states, multi-national companies, international organizations gearing up to mute Wikileaks. But this seems to produce the contrary effect. Even more sites are adopting the content and splitter it throughout the entire net.
It is about leadership. No longer a clear one-way, organisation-focused and often hierarchical leadership can trump and curtail the network-oriented, multi-way, distributed leadership of the wiki and web-world.
Whatever you think and agree or disagree with Wikileaks- this is no longer a phenomena about news and transparency. This is the start of a fundamental discussion about leadership in a web 2.0 world.
I am curious to check out how many sites will be listed when I wake up tomorrow.
Hi Tina,
ReplyDeleteThere is something else that is making me think.
The countries where freedom of speech is granted are showing an excess of neurotic reactions that are similar to the ones made by non democratic governments when they listen or read something they don't like.
As I understand Assange thinks that the US for example lets freedom of speech because speech lost meaning and power, therefore whatever a citizen could say would not affect easily US interests. What Wikileaks is doing would be to add power to speech. Then some US authorities start reacting as other places where the word has power for example China (that's why the restrict the word).
Freedom of speech would be like legal marihuana.
The effect of Amazon and PayPal reactions will definitively impact strongly the conversation. They are the sample of 2 big online organizations that are afraid and opt to comply with the establishment. What would that mean to bloggers, independents and companies that would like to participate supporting Wikileaks?
Who are they? who are we? - Wikileaks is starting an incredible movement that is pushing everyone to define a position. But the crazy thing is that taking a position involves courage! (would they remove my US visa if I express a contrary opinion to the one they like?)
This one is a rare opportunity for democracy and freedom. If some governments will transform Assange into a martyr that will be a global phenomena. Let's remember that followers chose the leaders.
Is now the Web a place where we exercise freedom? Is it a place where to hide when governments are uncomfortable? The consequences are going to be huge.
From CNN:
"The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade."
-Julian Assange from http://tinyurl.com/2fbru4q