Information gradient

Asymmetric Polarization has been a certain trait of society, as far as all the documented history of human race have revealed. This conscious polarization of the society into one small advantageous section, and a large suppressed section has been true since the times of patriarchal settlements to the current civilized democracies.

Creating a gradient in the society using various manipulable parameters, with an ultimate motive of facilitating oppression has been the unwritten rule throughout. The parameters, which have been manipulated at various epochs of History have been different: Class, Caste, Gender, Land, industries, and today we are at a point where Information is this gradient causing agent.

Controlled knowledge as misinformation, and suppressed information in the form of secrets have become the weapons of 'mass' destruction in today's Information society. While there is information mining on certain type of information using all means possible; there is also an astronomical way of suppressing another kind of information.

Stuck in the middle of this Information Revolution, most of us are the ignorant technologists paradoxically driving the motors of this oppression regime. Like I usually end up saying,
The problem often is not arriving at the solution, but in many cases realizing the existence of the problem itself!

Even in this case, the lack of cognizance amongst us about the perils of the information gradient, that we are very much a part of, is of more concern than even the contemplation on the solution to this threat.

As instances of whistleblowing, RTI's and WikiLeaks in general have shown the ever increasing risks involved with the just attempts of declassifying high level classified information should put us at alert, and we must begin to analyze the inertness of ourselves and the hyperactivity of the suppressors who would in turn manipulate and try disabling us!

We help build the gradient which is favourable to them, while ironically is perilous to ourselves.

Inside WikiLeaks, and inside Inside WikiLeaks!

 I am a self proclaimed admirer of Julian Assange [J] and more so of WikiLeaks[WL]. Let this trait of mine not induce an idea that this post of mine is in favor of J or WL, in manners more than what they deserve.

Daniel Schmitt [D], actually the pseudonym of Daniel Domscheit-Berg is the author of the supposedly tell all book about WikiLeaks in his recent hurriedly written, crib-log Inside WikiLeaks.

I took up reading this one for, this is the first account of any details from within the secretive whistle-blowers platform WikiLeaks. But, as ridiculous a book could get, Inside WikiLeaks is majorly the yanking of D about J's personal habits, dressing sense, his perception of women, arrogance, egotism and everything that should have been confined to one's personal observations about a fellow comrade in their struggle against secrecy, and for transparency.

Non conformity with the book

WL has always propagated that "Transparency is only for Governments and big corporations, and not necessarily for individuals". I think D had got this idea distorted and goes on yanking about J's personality, and reporting nuances of J's behavior like kids would do in kindergarten.

J eats with his hands, and wipes off on his pants.
J taps the keyboard hard, creating disturbing noise.
J wore the same white shirt for both the days of the conference.
J eats faster and leaves me little to eat.
J gets more importance, and not the team, or myself.
J wears my jacket, and goes to sleep.
J pounces on my cat.
J is not bothered about selling the T-shirts, he's busy philosophizing.
J is paranoid!
And lots of commentary on J's sexuality, to the extent that D brands J a sexist.

D, for all the credibility he has as being an important person who was working for WL, hailng from the Chaos Computer Club, and to come out with a kindergarten complaint book of this sort is silly firstly, and also puts the work he had contributed to WL in bad light. I can very well anticipate the quality of work he would have been contributing to WL with a mindset such as this.

The claims of him being sidelined, and that J was getting more attention is again a point not worth debating. WL is the ingenious and courageous brainchild of J, and if he gets credit better than his counterparts, there's nothing wrong in it, unless you have peers who are trivially bothered about it. This is a normal issue in any team, and I can testify with first hand experience, like many of you would as well.

The most importantly ignored aspect about J, or WL in the book has been the security threats they have been undergoing. D pretends as if they were functioning in a safe and secure IT firm, just writing code. Even if some of the threat claims made by Assange have been exaggerated, instances where WL whistleblowers were killed, or Amazon, Paypal, VISA withdrew their services reveal to great extents the opposition WL was/is being conditioned to. And because J had to front end WL in times of most turbulence, even his safety and well being is at evident risk.
The circumstantial allegations of the sexual misconduct by two women, to get J grounded is more than a normal reaction to what could have been J's actions.

Conformity with the book

Although the book is filled with nonsensical commentary on J, the details about how WL functioned initially, or at least to the point of narration where D is still not jealous of J is quite a read.
A single decade old server hosting WL for the first whole stint, and portraying it differently to the external world, or about the impact their leaks had is enjoyable.

The criticism on the disorientation of WL from its core principles of neutrality, because J wanted to go head on with the US, if true is a point I too would be worried about. As far as D has written in this book, J's anarchist tendencies have driven him to a war with the US. But, I cannot deny the fact that, when you take World politics and are trying to make it transparent, the US of course would emerge from under everyone's carpets. And to expose the world, is in reality exposing the US, for, the US is so intrinsically involved with the rest of the world!

Holding back of leaks, or if any bias has happened to them as D alleges, that again is a matter of immense concern. Although, apart from the commentary which influence the opinions of the audience, the material by itself will be authentic, or the concerned authorities would certainly pull WL into intended espionage.

About alleged mishandling of the donations to WL, which is the core motive which has driven D to write this book according to me, must sometime come under scrutiny, or better if J would publish the transactions to shut the critics.

The internal structure, and inherent secrecy of WL as an organization is understandable for, they're in a tough game, playing big opponents and functioning with transparency is something a small team like theirs cannot afford to.

About Open Leaks [OL], I am certainly looking forward to it taking off. For, if OL can be better than WL, by not influencing the nature of leaks, or precedence, or of the recipients of the leaks, it will certainly be better. Transparency on their platform theoretically sounds very promising, and if accomplished it can certainly become the baton holder of whistle-blowers after WL.

D says,
"There's enough injustice in the world to occupy more than one (whistleblowing) platform.", and let us hope both together can make the world a better place.

All said and done, WikiLeaks made the world aware of the importance of whistleblowing to a greater extent than ever before in the History, encouraging a lot of dissidents to take up the cause. Julian Assange, irrespective of his gray shades personally, has been the spokesperson for transparency of Governments globally and will remain an icon ( maybe not of Pop icon nature, as claimed by Daniel), but more important than that – A role model to today's technologists to take up issues of social concern, without secluding themselves from the realities around...

Asymmetric geniuses!

Thanks to one of my fellow rationales for discussing this observation with me,  which I have only tried to substantiate in this post.

It indeed is a very good observation that many of the 'geniuses' are in fact asymmetric. Asymmetric as in, either they aren't the best at their 'social etiquette', or  the best of the home-makers!
But, does that mean they are unworthy of their ingenuity?

What most of us, who want to be the "Jack of all, Master of none" accomplish in the end is tagging ourselves onto the humongous and over-crowded cloud of mediocrity.

In order to focus and excel in all domains, the resources allocated to us when we are the conscious part of the Universe are in deficit. As a result, we can channelize our efforts to few domains, and can succeed in fewer.

So, becoming the "Master of all" isn't feasible, in reality.

When such is the case, geniuses from any field have tried to make a trade off between their work and social/personal lives. The likes of Newton, Tolstoy, Marx, Shakespeare, Einstein, Feynman and many other minds who have put us at awe with their groundbreaking work have had 'problems' in their social or personal lives, gauging them with the rest of the mediocrity. Criticism and attacks on these minds for not being upto the society's mark in their etiquette has testimonials throughout the course of civilisation, which is absurd.

Weird, really??

Recently, Julian Assange the founder and Chief Editor of WikiLeaks, a genius and maverick of sorts, has had to face a lot of mud-slinging. This coming from, as expected, the rest of the mediocrity.
My point has always been, why bother about the individual's personal/social life unless it affects you directly! Whether he/she likes cats or not, if they wear the same shirt for more than a day, or if they keep changing their girl friends?
It should be of no concern for, the work from them is what influences us. Unless they try to influence their supposed wierdness onto us, we should be least bothered, or distracted about their lives.

In the case of WikiLeaks, this has been an extensive smear campaign against Julian Assange , who has been the Spokesperson and the front-end to the entire movement of WikiLekas. By distracting the audience from the essentials, the media certainly has done its job of trying to reduce the credibility of WikiLeaks amongst the gullibles,  of course. But, where has all the grey matter of people vanished? Most people actually seem to be concerned more about Assange's wierd hairdo than the ideals he has brought to life with his work.

Asymmetric nature of minds at work should be recognised as a necessity for them to concentrate their efforts on the work they do, rather than expecting them to be the clichéd, stereotype social animals.

Public voice and Democracy

Conflicts and friction between individuals and bodies of authority have been consistent throughout the evolution of human civilization. Every time humanity has been witness to this abrasion, it has resulted in consequences which have reverberated throughout the rest of time. In most cases, the bottom line cause for these frictions have been the question of Rights and Liberties.

Perpetuation of the hard earned rights and liberties of individuals, enabling a free society can be accomplished only when there is a guaranteed voice for the public. This highly important voice of public has undergone extensive metamorphosis, and has been evolving with greater capabilities with every passing day.

Like every other social asset, these media are natural, double-edged swords with opportunities of using and misusing them. Although the primary objective of these public voices, or the media is to become what they were created for, i.e, to present the combined opinions of the masses as a single, unified, loud voice, which the authorities, in many cases the Governments would give heed to.

On the contrary, and quite as expected, these channels for public voices, instead of talking for the people, have many a times taken a U turn and have been engaged in curtailing the quintessential rights of people.

This toggling behavior of the media has been true in the case of most of today's obvious technologies: The Printing Press, Radio, Television, Telephony, and now the Internet. These have all played major roles, either by supporting or hindering the rights of the individual.

The historical understanding of the role media have played very well substantiates their importance.
Betrayal of the people by the media, and taking up a stance against the people, on behalf of hegemonic authorities has been a symptom indicating unhealthy governance systems. To eradicate such cancers, a neutral medium, independent of the Governments, or monopolies had to be created.

The Internet, started off by giving lot of optimistic hope on those lines, and was successful until only it was sparsely available to the common people. With its increasing ubiquity, the threat Internet could pose to the biggies in their anti-people endeavors has been shrewdly identified and all efforts to curb the democracy in the Internet is underway.

Curtails on the freedom of expression, on a media like Internet could be catastrophic. A collapse of democracy in the Internet, would naturally culminate into the collapse of democracy in the Governance itself.

The Internet has the potential to become the most democratic voice of the masses, which has eluded the human civilization for ages. It has flaws, but it is the best tool at our disposal in today's world. Instead of making it better, a growing menace of curbing it and negating the essence of democracy in the Internet has been ongoing at a very brisk pace.

When sanguine initiatives like the Wikileaks, in the people's perspective are being harrassed and abused by the most powerful of the Governments world across, it acts as an indicator of the quality of democracy, or the pseudo democracy we all believe to be living in.

In the conflicts of people and the authoritarian regime in the oligarchies of the day, we need to vanguard the one, big voice we have come to arrive at : Freedom of Expression in the Internet. With the trend of increased laws and curtails on the Internet, we will lose out, probably the best opportunity presented to our generations.

Keeping Internet closer to the people, is the only real way forward.


PS: Working on these lines, we have started campaign in support of Wikileaks and Web Democracy. If you feel concerned, join us.
http://wiki-leaks.wikispaces.com/
Sign up on the signature campaign to show your intent about Wikileaks.
http://www.fsmk.org/support-wikileaks