Here's my latest column for the Caledonian Mercury - thoughts on the Wikileaks controversy. A huge moment for net-activists everywhere, where the openness of the web as a structure meets the self-defined boundaries of state power. High stakes, no matter your assessment of Assange. All comments welcomed. [All research links are at the bottom of the piece, in extended entry, as well as hotlinked in the text]
* * *
For those of us who have marvelled (and sometimes quivered) at the truly revolutionary power of the internet, the current Wikileaks phenomenon is the point where all the hype and idealism hits the hard reality of global politics.
The stream of US diplomatic cables, managed into the public realm by respectable news organisations like the Guardian and the New York Times, has freaked the US establishment so much that it's shaken the network society like a rag-doll. They've not just brought cyber-brandnames like Amazon and Paypal to heel, but they've even put the squeeze on Visa and Mastercard, in their attempt to choke Assange's organisational windpipe.
Now the Wikileaks' founder is under arrest, we'll see whether the tentacles of American power extend even further into the extradition procedures of another sovereign state (ah, I think we know the answer to that one). But as the circus proceeds, and the adversaries line up on either side - defenders of diplomatic statecraft on one hand, anarchistic unravellers of state power on another - perhaps we can look at all this from another angle.
It's not just national governments who've had to respond to the Net's x-rays of transparency. Since the heydays of Naomi Klein's No Logo in 1999, brand-led corporate capitalism has been grappling with motivated activists who want to rub countervailing facts in the face of glowing public rhetoric.
And a decade later, it's clearly had an effect. Recent consumer surveys have found that only 9% of people trusted companies to act in their best interests (60% said "sometimes", and 31% said "never"). In the current context, three reasons are often cited. First, the financial crisis was the final act that confirmed consumer cynicism about the worth of corporate governance and the business sector in general.
Secondly, our mobile media allows us to filter our own information, untouched by the gatekeepers of traditional media. And lastly, the social web allows us to prioritise the opinions of our friends, family and peers over the thudding messages of top-down branding.
In this environment, where information about the sharp-dealing or shady practices of a company are easily and speedily circulated, a new philosophy of marketing is emerging. Instead of pushing people into a preferred way of engaging with a product, companies are now beginning to share their problems (and solutions) with consumers.
Instead of promoting a product's worth, they try to propagate it, encouraging creative use (and even mis-use) of an "adaptive" brand. Instead of business being all about getting straight to the purchase, it should be about participation. In the words of the UK marketing company New Tradition, you "cement a connection with the consumer" through an open platform (like Facebook) "who may or may not purchase a product at a later date".
Thirdly, branding shouldn't be about generating loyalty, but about associating your product with like-minded people, or intrinsically interesting ideas, that already have an existing and vibrant following.
It's easy to get a sense of the old days of business by watching any episode of Mad Men. Here you have a patriarchy of secretive, arrogant image-builders, unremittingly cynical about how they manage the gap between the aspirational images of advertising they pump out, and the sordid reality of poor products and corrupt business practice.
Now, what does that sound like? And how does that map over to our current clash between the world of nation-state diplomacy and statecraft, and the anarchistic information-idealism of Wikileaks and their allies? Pretty well, in many ways. The political classes of the developed West have been largely mistrusted for at least a decade now - and let's not forget our own local data-driven crisis, the Telegraph's drip-feed of information about MP's expenses.
The street-level disrespect of social media is never-ending, all-pervasive, democratically exhilarating. On a tiny level, I've particuarly enjoyed the website featuring four YouTube videos of Nick Clegg implacably opposing tuition fees before the UK General Election - "on a loop for ever and ever and ever", as the cheeky website owner says.
But as marketer Ian Thomas says, Wikileaks really raises the game here - expanding the ambition of this informational scrutiny from a national to a global level of governance, appropriate to where the real power of decision operates.
Yet what does this scrutiny reveal? There's been a storm of interpretation of what impact the cables so far released will have. Writers like John Naughton, Glenn Greenwald and Assange himself claim that out of the blizzard of material, we can now see that our leaders have always known that Afghanistan is a hopeless, corrupt, Vietnam-like quagmire - but that they cannot fully face their tax-paying, soldier-expending electorates with that fact.
Added to the Iraq disclosures of a few months ago, this is Wikileaks attempting to lay bare the infernal mechanisms of the "War on Terror". They regard themselves as a "fifth estate" practising what Assange calls "scientific journalism" - a data dump so comprehensive that it will spur the fourth estate to rise out of its investigative torpor and establishment collusion.
But beyond the bloodthirsty ravings of some members of the American establishment, there is another consistent take on Cablegate - which is that they show an American diplomatic service trying to do their best, as their post-Cold-War empire slowly declines. For them, as Neal Ascherson puts it, "preventing [nuclear] apocalypse has become more important than striving for world leadership... this is a diplomacy clearer about what it doesn't want than what it does".
In the aftermath of all this, let's return to our brand discussion. If we think of Western statecraft and diplomacy as a brand now damaged and tarnished by the demystifications of info-activism - as the Nikes, Gaps and Shell Oils had been in the past - how should they respond?
For one thing, that intriguing netherworld - where politicians and diplomats conduct gentlemanly double-bluffs between the members of unaccountable power elites - will now never be the same. And if they think that any amount of new regulation, individual imprisonment, or coercion of networks will return them to the status quo ante, they are deluded.
So perhaps they should listen to these clever brand marketers. Instead of pushing hard their right to conduct international double-speak in order to promote the nation's interests, maybe they should share out those same global problems with all those citizens who may want a voice in the process.
What's the geopolitical equivalent of the vibrant users' online forum, where all can go to explore, inquire and test out solutions? How can statecraft tap into the kinds of participative enthusiasm for peace-making, community-building and conflict-resolving that so many netizens already display? Gordon and Sarah Brown's new website lauds the activist network Avaaz as exactly this kind of endeavour.
And as large brands now look towards associating the values of their product or service with authentic movements and social groups, perhaps there is a future concordat to be struck between Wikileaks-style organisations and their currently enraged American pursuers?
As Evgeny Morozov wrote in the Financial Times earlier this week, Assange's movement could become "either a new Red Brigades, or a new Transparency International...But handled correctly, the state that will benefit most from a nerdy network of 21st-century Che Guevaras, is America itself".
At the very least, we have an immediate branding glitch: Hilary Clinton was making speeches about the power of free information to create healthy societies only a few months ago, but is now squeezing the fibre-optics of the internet like the most enthusiastic Chinese firewall manager.
As Morozov says, better to harness the power of these hackers "as useful allies of the West as it seeks to husband democracy and support human rights" - that is, make them a complement of Western soft power or public diplomacy - than to martyr their main representative and thus radicalise his followers.
The leaked US embassy cables themselves hardly show a steely American empire bent on world domination - more a faltering hegemon, resigned to world mitigation. A YouTube video of John F. Kennedy has been flying around the wiki-sphere. In it, JFK reminds his fellow citizens that the very First Amendment the Founders struck was to guarantee a free press, empowered to investigate and criticise the state. There's surely some grounds there for mutual understanding.
When the current idiocies die down, perhaps the cerebral Obama can channel his great Democratic forbear, and think his way through to a better accomodation with the Wikileakers - whose aim, as Assange has often said, is to make themselves unnecessary. Barack was, after all, Brand No. 1 for a while.
Research links
Julian Assange : Pictures, Videos, Breaking News
Nathan Gardels: WikiLeaks and the Perils of Extreme Glasnost: A Talk with Evgeny Morozov
Michael Brenner: WikiLeaks: The Three Faces of Uncle Sam
Alexia Parks: WikiLeaks: The First World InfoWar
Wikileaks and the Long Haul « Clay Shirky
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/12/wikileaks-and-the-long-haul/comment-page-1/#comment-3222
WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates | News | guardian.co.uk
Media Diary Blog | The Australian
Useful #wikileaks articles | joannejacobs.net
Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government” « zunguzungu
Defend WikiLeaks or lose free speech - Dan Gillmor - Salon.com
Does Wikileaks Represent The End Of Internet History?
So, Why is WikiLeaks a Good Thing Again?
The lawless Wild West attacks WikiLeaks - Salon.com Mobile
Julian Assange Ducks the Question A Lot of Us Have About Wikileaks - Jay Rosen: Public Notebook
War of the Worlds and the new brand principles
WikiLeaks Shines a Light on the Limits of Techno-Politics - Whimsley
WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Chased by Turmoil - NYTimes.com
Wikistan 2: the net of exception | Crítica Pura
BBC NEWS | Technology | Who stands to gain from Wikileaks?
Memex 1.1 » Blog Archive » What the attacks on WikiLeaks tell us
Technofile: WikiLeaks - it could be you next | Caledonian Mercury - Business and Technology
Hillary Clinton on internet freedom, January 21 | Foreign Policy
Scripting News: WikiLeaks on the run
Memex 1.1 » Blog Archive » WikiLeaks: why it’s important (and why it’s complicated)
John F Kennedy: The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. « Vendorprisey
Not such wicked leaks | Presseurop – English
The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange - David Samuels - International - The Atlantic
The Blueprint | the human network