Wikileaks and the Long Haul

My comments on this blog post

Your criticisms seem to make an apriori assumption, that people in 21st century need bunch of laws, government, some sort of management. Centralization, concentration, standardization are key tenets of a by-gone Industrial Age, and according to this viewpoint, a “centralized” government that issues “standard” laws to apply to everyone (one size fits all) and concentrates key responsibilities in key bureucracies, is simply not sustainable, and in fact, passe. Havent we seen enough proof of this already? 9/11, Katrina, 2000 election mishaps in Florida were all failures of this broken system. Iraq War is another, and actually was an event could be stopped if we had a system like Wikileaks back in 2000.

A lawyer once told me (yes I know a few) that law is about applying the past to the future. What if that past is so distant now in terms of mentality that it cannot be applied to the present anymore? I’m not talking about anarchy here, but different ways to organize using the latest technology, not trying to extend a steam engine based smokestack system.

To which robble responds:

I think Koala makes a good point. I was thinking the same thing when I was reading the article. It’s not just about deciding how transparent information should be. The idea of a centralised government making one-size-fits-all laws (on our behalf) feels out of date.

Yes, shortcuts are nauseating – that’s down to panic.

But the ‘proper process’ is out of date too.The people who make would ‘decisions about checks and balances for newly increased transparency’ will be the people already in power. They have vested interests in keeping things as they are.

On Koala’s point of different ways to organise using the latest technology: the idea of a more participative democracy (WikiDemocracy?) where we all have more of a say in making laws and decisions feels more like where we’re heading than creating legislation that’ll be instantly out of date.

In that scenario the idea of an elite (holding information from us) doesn’t make sense anymore.