A conversation on TED.com: The role of off stream media such as Wikileaks and Social networking sites in the "awakening of the people."

Anshul Pandey
New Delhi, Delhi
India

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The role of off stream media such as Wikileaks and Social networking sites in the "awakening of the people."

Every organization rests upon a foundation of secrets. Or so the wikileaks tagline goes. Indeed, every organization, party, system or government has some secrets that it does not want to make public for the fear of either public backlash or grave loss. But keeping these secrets amount to what experts call as "lack of transparency". Do the social networking sites in collaboration with whistle blowing sites such as Wikileaks play an important role in stirring up of revolutions and toppling of governments? If so, to what extent? If yes, can it be justifiably concluded then, that the war for dominance is being played on the virtual battlefield?

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Joe Sixleaks
- 0
Apr 23 2011: The movies about Wikileaks cover this theme extensively. There are a handful of movies [see below] coming out about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and one of the points bieng made is that information is becoming a form of warfare. It's not just that information is being used to _make_ war, it's that information itself is _becoming_ war. Whomever controls the social graph controls the poulation. Right now, rebels worldwide are far more capable at utilizing the social network for power than is the establishment. It's destabilizing, for better or worse.

The movies:
1 - Dreamworks (Spielberg?) - http://www.deadline.com/2011/03/dreamworks-enters-wikileaks-movie-sweepstakes-buying-two-major-books/

2 - Universal (Alex Gibney and Marc Shmuger) - http://www.deadline.com/2011/01/sundance-universal-pictures-acquires-wikileaks-julian-assange-docu-by-alex-gibney-and-ex-uni-chairman-marc-shmuger/

3 - Independent ("WikiRebels") - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhTfOL9_HBE
Mark Meijer 100+
- 0
Host Associate

Apr 17 2011: Rather than there being a "virtual battlefield" where this "war for dominance is being played out", I'd rather suggest that this virtual environment, while limited in some ways, in other ways elevates our capacity for abstraction and helps to reveal a larger picture, to a point where we're starting to see that really such ideas of war and dominance are hilariously obsolete.