[Reader-list] Ten Theses on Wikileaks by Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

[anupam chakravartty]

thanks for posting them Shuddha.

anupam

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 1:10 AM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net>wrote:

> For those intrigued by Wikileaks -
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>  Resent-From: nettime at kein.org
>> From: Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>
>> Date: 30 August 2010 5:53:10 PM GMT+05:30
>> Resent-To: Nettime <nettime-l at kein.org>
>> To: nettime-l at kein.org
>> Subject: <nettime> Ten Theses on Wikileaks by Geert Lovink and Patrice
>> Riemens
>>
>> Ten Theses on Wikileaks
>> By Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens
>>
>> These 0.
>> "What do I think of Wikileaks? I think it would be a good
>> idea!" (after Mahatma Gandhi's famous quip on 'Western Civilisation')
>>
>> These 1.
>> Disclosures and leaks have been of all times, but never before has a
>> non state- or non- corporate affiliated group done this at the scale
>> Wikileaks managed to with the 'Afghan War Logs'.  But nonetheless we
>> believe that this is more something of a quantitative leap than of a
>> qualitative one. In a certain sense, these 'colossal' Wikileaks
>> disclosures can simply be explained as a consequence of the dramatic
>> spread of IT usage, together with a dramatic drop in its costs,
>> including those for the storage of millions of documents. Another
>> contributing factor is the fact that safekeeping state and corporate
>> secrets - never mind private ones - has become rather difficult in an
>> age of instant reproducibility and dissemination.  Wikileaks here
>> becomes symbolic for a transformation in the 'information society' at
>> large, and holds up a mirror of future things to come. So while one
>> can look at Wikileaks as a (political) project, and criticize it for
>> its modus operandi, or for other reasons, it can also be seen as a
>> 'pilot' phase in an evolution towards a far more generalized culture
>> of anarchic exposure, beyond the traditional politics of openness and
>> transparency.
>>
>> These 2.
>> For better or for worse, Wikileaks has skyrocketed itself into the
>> realm of high-level international politics. Out of the blue, Wikileaks
>> has briefly become a full-blown player both on the world scene, as
>> well as in the national sphere of some countries. By virtue of its
>> disclosures, Wikileaks, small as it is, appears to carry the same
>> weight as government or big corporations - in the domain of
>> information gathering and publicizing at least. But at same time it is
>> unclear whether this is a permanent feature or a hype-induced
>> temporary phenomenon - Wikileaks appears to believe the former, but
>> only time will tell. Nonetheless Wikileaks, by word of its best known
>> representative Julian Assange, think that, as a puny non-state and non-
>> corporate actor, it is boxing in the same weight-class  as the
>> Pentagon - and starts to behave accordingly. One could call this the
>> 'Talibanization' stage of postmodern - "Flat World" - theory where
>> scales, times, and places have been declared largely irrelevant. What
>> counts is the celebrity momentum and the amount of media attention.
>> Wikileaks manages to capture that attention by way of spectacular
>> information hacks where other parties, especially civil society groups
>> and human rights organizations, are desperately struggling to get
>> their message across. Wikileaks genially puts to use the 'escape
>> velocity' of IT - using IT to leave IT behind and irrupt into the
>> realm of real-world politics.
>>
>> These 3.
>> In the ongoing saga termed "The Decline of the US Empire", Wikileaks
>> enters the stage as the slayer of a soft target. It would be difficult
>> to imagine it doing quite the same to the Russian or Chinese
>> government, or even to that of Singapore - not to speak of their ...
>> err ... 'corporate' affiliates. Here distinct, and huge, cultural and
>> linguistic barriers are at work, not to speak of purely power-related
>> ones, that would need to be surmounted. Also vastly different
>> constituencies obtain there, even if we speak about the more limited
>> (and allegedly more globally shared) cultures and agendas of hackers,
>> info-activists and investigative journalists. In that sense Wikileaks
>> in its present manifestation remains a typically 'Western' product and
>> cannot claim to be a truly universal or global undertaking.
>>
>> These 4.
>> One of the main difficulty with explaining Wikileaks  arises from the
>> fact it is unclear - and also unclear to the Wikileaks people
>> themselves - whether it sees itself and operates as a content provider
>> or as a simple carrier of leaked data (whichever one, as predicated by
>> context and circumstances, is the impression). This, by the way, has
>> been a common problem ever since media went massively online and
>> publishing and communications became a service rather than a product.
>> Julian Assenge cringes every time he is portrayed as the editor-in-
>> chief of Wikileaks, yet on the other hand, Wikileaks says it edits
>> material before publication and claims it checks documents for
>> authenticity with the help of hundreds of volunteer analysts. This
>> kind of content vs. carrier debates have been going on for a number of
>> decades amongst media activists with no clear outcome. Therefore,
>> instead of trying to resolve this inconsistency, it might be better to
>> look for fresh approaches and develop new, critical, concepts for what
>> has become a hybrid publishing practice involving actors far beyond
>> the traditional domain of professional news media.
>>
>> These 5.
>> The steady decline of investigative journalism due to diminishing
>> support and funding is an undeniable fact. The ever-ongoing
>> acceleration and over-crowding in the so-called attention economy
>> makes that there is no longer enough room for complicated stories. The
>> corporate owners of mass circulation media are also less and less
>> inclined to see the working of the neo-liberal globalized economy and
>> its politics detailled and discussed at length. The shift of
>> information towards infotainment demanded by the public and media-
>> owners has unfortunately also been embraced as a working style by
>> journalists themselves making it difficult to publish complex stories.
>> Wikileaks erupts in this state of affairs as an outsider within the
>> steamy ambiance of 'citizen journalism' and DIY news reporting in the
>> blogosphere. What Wikileaks anticipates, but so far has not been able
>> to organize, is the 'crowd sourcing' of the actual interpretation of
>> its leaked documents.
>> Traditional investigative journalism consisted of three phase:
>> unearthing facts, cross-checking these and backgrounding them into an
>> understandable discourse. Wikileaks does the first, claims to do the
>> second, but leaves the issue of the third completely blank. This is
>> symptomatic of a particular brand of the open access ideology, whereby
>> the economy of content production itself is externalized to unknown
>> entities 'out there'. The crisis in investigative journalism is
>> neither understood nor recognized. How the productive entities are
>> supposed to sustain themselves is left in the dark. It is simply
>> presumed that the analysis and interpretation will be taken up by the
>> traditional news media but this is not happening automatically. The
>> saga of the Afghan War Logs demonstrates that Wikileaks has to
>> approach and negotiate with well-established traditional media to
>> secure sufficient credibility. But at the same time these also prove
>> unable to fully process the material.
>>
>> These 6.
>> Wikileaks is a typical SPO (Single Person Organization). This means
>> that initiative-taking, decision making, and the execution process is
>> largely centralized in the hands of one single person. Much like small
>> and medium-size businesses the founder cannot be voted out and unlike
>> many collectives leadership is not rotating. This is not an uncommon
>> feature within organizations, indifferent whether they operate in the
>> realm of politics, culture or the 'civil society' sector. SPOs are
>> recognizable, exciting, inspiring, and easy to feature in the media.
>> Their sustainability, however is largely dependent on the actions of
>> their charismatic leader, and their functioning is difficult to
>> reconcile with democratic values. This is also why they are difficult
>> to replicate and do not scale up easily. Sovereign hacker Julian
>> Assange is the identifying figurehead of Wikileaks, whose notoriety
>> and reputation very much merges with his own, blurring the distinction
>> between what it does and stands for and Assange's (rather agitated)
>> private life and (somewhat unpolished) political opinions.
>>
>> These 7.
>> Wikileaks is also an organization deeply shaped by 1980s hacker
>> culture combined with the political values of techno-libertarianism
>> which emerged in the 1990s. The fact that Wikileaks  has been founded,
>> and is still to a large extent run  by hard core geeks, forms an
>> essential frame of reference to understand its values and moves. This,
>> unfortunately, comes together with a good dose of the somewhat less
>> savory aspects of hacker culture. Not that idealism, the desire to
>> contribute to making the world a better place, could be denied to
>> Wikileaks, quite on the contrary. But this idealism is paired with a
>> preference for conspiracies, an elitist attitude and a cult of secrecy
>> (never mind condescending manners) which is not conducive to
>> collaboration with like minded people and groups - reduced to the
>> position of simple consumers of Wikileaks outcomes.
>>
>> These 8.
>> Lack of commonality with congenial 'another world is possible'
>> movements forces Wikileaks to seek public attention by way of
>> increasingly spectacular - and risky - disclosures, while gathering a
>> constituency of often wildly enthusiastic, but totally passive
>> supporters. Following the nature and quantity of Wikileaks exposures
>> from its inception up to the present day is eerily reminiscent of
>> watching a firework display, and that includes a 'grand finale' in the
>> form of the doomsday-machine pitched, waiting-to-be-unleashed,
>> 'Insurance' document. This raises serious doubts about the long-term
>> sustainability of Wikileaks itself, but possibly also, that of the
>> Wikileaks model. Wikileaks operates on a ridiculously small size
>> (probably no more than a dozen of people form the core of its
>> operation). While the extent and savvyness of Wikileaks' tech support
>> is proved by its very existence, Wikileaks' claim to several hundreds,
>> or even more, volunteer analysts and experts is unverifiable, and to
>> be frank, barely credible. This is clearly Wikileaks Achilles' heel,
>> not only from a risks and/or sustainability standpoint, but
>> politically as well - which is what matters to us here.
>>
>> These 9.
>> Wikileaks displays a stunning lack of transparancy in its internal
>> organization. Its excuse that "Wikileaks needs to be completely opaque
>> in order to force others to be totally transparent." amounts to little
>> more than Mad Magazine's famous Spy vs Spy cartoons. You win from the
>> opposition but in a way that makes you undistinguishable from it. And
>> claiming the moral high ground afterwards is not really helpful - Tony
>> Blair too excelled in that exercise. As Wikileaks is neither a
>> political collective nor an NGO in the legal sense, and not a company
>> or part of social movement for that matter, we need first of all
>> discuss what type of organization it is that we deal with. Is it a
>> virtual project? After all, it does exist as a hosted website with a
>> domain name, which is the bottom line. But does it have a goal beyond
>> the personal ambition of its founder(s)? Is Wikileaks reproducible and
>> will we see the rise of national or local chapters that keep the name
>> Wikileaks? And according to which playing rules will they operate? Or
>> should we rather see it as a concept that travels from context to
>> context and that, like a meme, transforms itself in time and space?
>> Maybe Wikileaks will organize itself around an own version of the
>> IETF's slogan 'rough consensus and running code'? Project like
>> Wikipedia and Indymedia have both resolved this issue in their own
>> ways, but not without crises, forks and disruptive conflicts. A
>> critique like the one voiced here does not aim to force Wikileaks into
>> a traditional format but on the contrary to explore whether Wikileaks
>> (and its future clones, associates, avatars and assorted family
>> members) could stand model for new forms of organizations and
>> collaborations. Elsewhere the term 'organized network' has been coined
>> as a possible term for this formats. In the past there was talked of
>> 'tactical media'. Others have used the generic term 'internet
>> activism'. Perhaps Wikileaks has other ideas in what direction it
>> wants to take this organizational debate. But where? It is of course
>> up to Wikileaks to decide for itself but up to now we have seen very
>> little by way of an answer, leaving others, like the Wall Street
>> Journal, to raise questions, e.g., about Wikileaks' financial bona
>> fides.
>>
>> These 10.
>> We do not think that taking a stand in favor or against Wikileaks is
>> what matters most. Wikileaks is there, and there to stay till it
>> either scuttles itself or is destroyed by the forces opposing its
>> operation. Our point is rather to (try to) pragmatically assess and
>> ascertain what Wikileaks can, could  - and maybe even, who knows,
>> should - do, and help formulate how 'we' could relate to and interact
>> with Wikileaks. Despite all its drawbacks, and against all odds,
>> Wikileaks has rendered a sterling service to the cause of
>> transparency, democracy and openness. We might wish it to be
>> different, but, as the French would say, if something like it did not
>> exist, it would have to be invented. The 'quantitative turn' of
>> information overload is a fact of present life. One can only expect
>> the glut of disclosable information to grow further - and
>> exponentially so. To organize and interpret this Himalaya of data is a
>> collective challenge that is out there, whether we give it the name
>> 'Wikileaks' or not.
>>
>> Amsterdam, late August 2010
>>
>>
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>
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> The Sarai Programme at CSDS
> Raqs Media Collective
> shuddha at sarai.net
> www.sarai.net
> www.raqsmediacollective.net
>
>
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