Thought Picnic: WikiLeaks is the new porn

The landscape has changed

This is my first blog on the WikiLeaks and I doubt it would be the last. I am of the opinion that the backlash against the organ and the public face of the organ hardly begins to address the main issues that WikiLeaks present us.

For a while now, governments institutions, politicians and the elite who used to have exclusive access to information and data for use in our name for their own purposes and motives have begun to realise that they have been made powerless if the knowledge that separates them from us the people becomes common place.

WikiLeaks has changed the information landscape and much as some can moralise to the point of suggesting extra-legal measures to punish as it were illegal activities we in the process fail to uphold the great principles that millions had already sacrificed their lives for in the Twentieth Century.

Porn can be compelling viewing

The anger is felt and the international framework of the black hand of diplomacy is placing heretofore conglomerates of capitalist democracies under pressure to dissemble about the marketplace that allowed for them to take WikiLeaks’ business.

WikiLeaks has become the new hard-core porn; whilst you as adults would for all sorts of reasons have the right to entertain yourselves with such material, it cannot be done on office time, you should not be found viewing such as US Federal employees have now been told not to do because the material is classified even though it is all now in the public domain but more egregious of us is a directive that threatened students who showed even the tacit support for WikiLeaks with the inability to find employment.

What you decide to do with hard-core porn on your own time in the confines of your privacy should be your business and yours only. If the pants of guilt consume you such that you seek absolution from your pleasure which to some is a vice and to the fundamentalist is a sin depends on how impressionable you might feel about the things you decide to consume and the kind of moral agent you are.

Our dependency complex

Human-beings seem to exercise the greatest dependency in reaching maturity and whilst some grow into maturity others transfer the dependency complex from parental and patriarchal figures to other kinds of leaders be they political, religious, social, economic or some other sphere of influence.

The seeming benefactors instil enough fear, threat and terror to curtail adventurism on the part of the many who can be dictated to, to toe the line and follow orders with the premise of patriotism and justice, their indignation whipped up into the frenzy of the mob as they are relieved of their rights of observation and expression for the greater good of not requiring their governments hold themselves accountable.

The function of WikiLeaks

The security breaches that have fed WikiLeaks are in no way the fault of WikiLeaks, the function of WikiLeaks if we have failed to notice is to leak information that has come into their possession, the matter of how that information is processed before dissemination is hardly the responsibility of WikiLeaks.

Like with hard-core porn some might want to watch the plot and the making out that develops into the full-blown action, others might just want to jump to the activity but it is unlikely that the viewer would have acquired the material for the purpose of assessing the dramatic content of the film – however, people would be titillated in different ways having viewed the material.

Where the porn analogy might fall through is where within that material something illegal seems to have occurred like the abuse of minors or something worse – in that case, caveat emptor, the viewer is advised.

Information all round

As for the detail contained in the leaks, I seem to know where every nuclear plant in Iran is courtesy of leaks provided by defectors (traitors of Iran but friends of the West) and now I know where every strategic US asset is, call your guards out, if your diplomats cannot maintain discretion preventing embarrassment the cost mounts in ensuring the guards are motivated enough not to allow the unfortunate to happen on their watch.

If anyone thinks hounding Julian Assange or closing WikiLeaks will end the expansive domain of the whistle-blower they have not learnt the most basic lesson of this WikiLeaks saga; as long as there is a message, there will always be a messenger and world is a very listening and attentive audience.

Just because porn works across borders, cultures, traditions, morals or feigned ethics, we all have our needs, even the ones we deny ourselves.

Getting Adam's apple but missing Eve's bite

Not a job for machines

I have many a time been at loggerheads with management at the workplace where they have refused to manage and tried to use technology to do the job they should be doing as managers.

I could very well remember once when I was asked to monitor the traffic of a particular employee because his manager thought he was not being productive.

My candid view was that the manager should call the person in for a chat and involve Human Resources if required but this was not a job for technology to do.

It is unfortunate that many organisations tend to inject technology into what should be effective interaction with people; it gets so bad that people sitting next to each other spam each other with unnecessarily cumbersome emails to the point that they begin to misunderstand each other and conflict brews.

Bosses using SMS messages to convey serious life-impact decisions because they have no nerve to address the matter face-to-face.

Who says what is?

However, the most amusing development of this kind of abstraction is exemplified in the patent that Apple was granted [1] to censure “age-inappropriate” messages between youngsters on iPhones.

I found that quite amusing because it infers that technology would identify all so-called “age-inappropriate” language with missing the context of the usage of multi-purpose and multi-contextual words like virgin (new, green, immature) cock (bird, prime), sex (gender, spruce), pussy (cat), kiss (proximity, give-up) to give just a few examples.

False security

Obviously, with this patent which is a sop to the angst-ridden parents or guardians and do-gooder child-protection activists there is the assumption that youngsters cannot develop their own parlance and communication to convey meanings uncommon to adults.

One good example of this variation of meaning was given by a commentator a few months ago, “My step-mother is wicked” would traditionally mean she is bad but could well mean that she is fantastic – I see a patent to confusion giving a sense of false security and protection where once the youngsters realise the censorship they’ll either switch phones or extend their vocabulary.

Shirking the right deed

What is required to good education about healthy communication to develop commendable habits not a filter of communication that would no doubt have big holes in to soon even if the filter is adapt to catch changes in usage and context over time.

It could well be used to prevent communication altogether and what is to say in American someone would not challenge the curtailment of free speech because some decency police squad is sat in Apple’s Cupertino Headquarters getting titillated with youngster expression of adult intent.

Apple might well offer a “freedom from porn” guarantee but I am not as convinced that having gotten Adam’s apple they have prevented Eve’s bite.

Source

[1] Apple awarded 'sexting' patent - Telegraph