Re: <nettime> [Fwd: [Goanet-News] Offtopic: Wikileaks and India]

["yonatan reinberg" <yoner@fastmail.fm>]

But but but... the world loves hero-worshiping. There was more outrage
about Time Magazine's pick of the year than there were about the
cables themselves. As if anyone actually gives a shit about Time's
POTY. Assange therefore has actually perfectly marketed himself and
WikiLeaks, and, precisely by being so weird, creepy and "charismatic"
(is he? has anyone ever known him outside his Facebook and livejournal
and etc?) the WL "saga" has been able to leak out of the parameters
preset by its conditions (a more 2.0 cryptome with sans-serif fonts)
and into the international consciousness.

Frankly, just like Napster, he'll be put away, hegemonically
transubstantiated into something less ideologically potent, and in
his place will come another "network" for trading information, with
its own dangers and potential liberties. I for one am happy that a
debate about control and technology is occurring, somehow, in broader
consciousness... and much more scared about, say, the complete lack of
sunlight on ACTA.

Hate him or love him, he has been able to act as a "stop", to quote
Marilyn Strathern, in an incredibly dense network of technology,
politics, and so forth. And whether you hate *it* or love it, the
vast majority of the world loves to focus on people rather than the
vagaries of protocol... And we think internet peeps are different?
Take a minute on Reddit these days and see how much he appeals to the
technolibertarian crowd just as much as as he is hated - and focused
upon - by the joe lieberman crowd. Assange is the newest killer app,
and yeah, killer apps suck cause they're limited, closed-source and
shiny, but... look how many complaints there were about the iPad, and
yet it's outselling everything else by the (millions?) thousands.

yoni



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