The World After Wikileaks

Since the summer I have been trying to figure out my opinion on Wikileaks. The approach of weighing pros and cons didn't really work, on the one hand it's good that governmental secrets are revealed, but on the other hand you can ask the question how useful the release of 250.000 cables is. Other than exposing tabloid-ready secrets about world leaders and providing journalists with a huge pile of documents to sift through I don't really see the use of this huge leak. The leakage of the Collateral Murder video which showed part of the workings of the U.S. Military in Iraq is from a different category, though. This showed grave acts that should be judged. But why does it have to be shown on YouTube? What does it matter if I see it or not? Or does Julian Assange actively want me to hate the U.S.?

You see, I couldn't distill one uniform opinion out of this. Until I watched the Dutch documentary The World After Wikileaks that was broadcast yesterday night. It's approach was to send a philosopher on his way to visit Theodore Dalrymple, a British writer and psychiatrist, Derrick de Kerckhove, a media-sociologist and Kevin Kelly, internet thinker and founder of Wired. I don't have any appropriate English video material so you'll have to do with a written description of my experience.

The three men gave their vision on, helping to provide another angle on the phenomenon then is provided by the media. There was a clip from FOX News, for example, which showed an anchor, furiously, addressing Obama to "give the C.I.A. the assignment to kill Assange!" He lost me for his case in not giving any arguments at all. Fortunately Kelly was a little bit more constructive in his argumentation. He sees Wikileaks as an invention, and inventions come with good as well as bad things. This provides for an interesting perspective, something like: inventions aren't good or bad on themselves, only humans give ethical meaning by the way they use them.

I've read other pieces by Kelly and I already knew that he's extremely progressive when it comes to privacy. He sees the future as completely transparent, and doesn't seem to worry about it very much.
Dalrymple, the shrink, is much more conservative. He doesn't necessarily condemn Wikileaks itself as 'bad' but is much more concerned with the way we treat our privacy. He sees us moving toward a shallow society that consists solely of soundbites (interestingly, Kelly thinks that Wikileaks is a way to give the soundbite-society more meaning). Dalrymple's main point the entire time was that the way we communicate in the era of internet is becoming meaningless, it's solely aimed at self-fulfillment, and real information gets buried under piles of 250.000 private messages by government officials. "Only people that have nothing to say, have nothing to hide," he said poignantly.

I kept thinking about an article, No Secrets, from the New Yorker which gives a pretty damn good portrait of Assange's life and the road to the release of Collateral Murder. Although it's already a good half year old, I think it's still actual and worth a read. Anyway, I think Dalrymple has got a very good point. There is no use in knowing about the personal affairs of the heads of states described in the diarrhea of cables. It will only contribute to, and not give more depth to the soundbite-society. We should also start asking questions about the way we communicate in modern times, through Facebook walls and half-minded IM chats.

Kelly says that Wikileaks is a way to restore the balance between the very powerful government and it's civilians. A balance that has, according to him, been destroyed a few decades ago. I don't really think Wikileaks is a way to restore any power-balance, it's merely a way to show the vulnerabilities of governments.
In short I think that Wikileaks should just have its way, that the FOX anchor that wants Assange dead is a crazy. But at the same time we should think much more about the way the internet changes us as individuals and our society. Dalrymple really has a point when saying that only people that have nothing to say, have nothing to hide.