Our New Age of Information Transparency: The WikiLeaks Cables

So here we are: CableGate, WikiLeaks, etc., and whatever else it will come to be called.  I propose that we hyperbolically refer to all this as the First Major Event in the New Epoch of Information Transparency.  The story over at the Times offers pretty good reporting (says this amateur reader): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?hp.

But there are (at least) two stories here.  There is the ‘regular’ story about diplomacy, espionage, and political intrigue.  Exciting!  But there is another story, one composed of more humble and quotidian details, which is much harder to tell, but which in this instance is painfully bright for all to see.  This is a story about information transparency, and how the internet is, once again, changing everything.

There will be plenty of attention in the coming days to the diplomacy strategies and tactics that are now unraveling across the world, as a day of millions of governmental phone calls gives way to a long night of millions of more such calls: diplomats explaining themselves, new promises being made with nothing but an earnest voice to back them up, old friends swearing about (and at) new enemies.

Midst that, there is a whole other story to be told here.  It is a story about what happens to a world where one of the basic (but not the only) commodity of information is rapidly transformed before our eyes.  What happens when the digital fact, one of our basic units of knowledge (but again not our only unit of knowledge), is opened up to the bright light of sunshine, and shows that it can no longer cloak itself in secrecy.  It is obvious that much of diplomacy practice has depended upon mendacity, and despite being obvious there is much to say about this, indeed very much (see Martin Jay’s book on this).  When transparency reigns, all of that practice, all of that diplomacy and politics, must change.

But it is not only politics that has depended upon lying and mendacity.  As a culture we prize truthfulness (see Bernard Williams’s book on this).  But we have also lost a sense of truthfulness.  This is because, in many arenas of life, we have learned how to get by without it.  Perhaps all that is over.  Perhaps all that is coming to an end.  Your wife or your husband, right now, has far more access to your email, your facebook messages, and your text messages than you would like to admit–so best to be good to her, or him, or at least to admit that you’ve been deceiving.  Romance, diplomacy, corporate behavior, even the speculative world of the gambler, have all for some time depended in essential ways on deception.  But perhaps all that is over.

Whether or not it is a good thing that transparency is appearing to trump secrecy is not really worth asking.  Shifts this momentous do not admit of evaluation.  Rather than groan in protest or cheer in celebration, it is best to just admit that we are now approaching a series of moments where the opportunities (for both gain and loss) will be, well, momentous.  The WikiLeaks CableGate is just the first (and indeed not really that) of many.  Rather than protest or celebrate, it is best for us now to begin the long labor of figuring out just how we can adjust to the new units of information we are surrounding ourselves with.  The question of whether or not they are good is as beside the point as it was for empiricists at the dawn of the new science to ask whether or not there should be such things as facts (see Mary Poovey’s book on this, provocatively titled A History of the Modern Fact).

It took us a long long time to adjust to the unit of information we so unthinkingly refer to today as the fact.  How long will it take us to adjust to that bold new unit of information that we might call the digital fact, and the requirement of transparency that thereby seems built-in?

As a final note, if you don’t believe that information transparency is, in fact, here to stay, then you might want to read Peter Ludlow’s excellent piece in a recent issue of The Nation, titled “WikiLeaks and Hacktivist Culture“.