Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Leaking Irony

While I work on more extended analysis of the WikiLeaks situation (among other things the obvious connection to my work on how geometries of information sharing are co-constitutive of social relationships and statuses), a small irony must be noted.

Apparently, several news organizations have had the material recently made public since August.  Editors and reporters have been meeting in secret to develop protocols about what would be reported, when, and how.  Fortunately for their work, it appears that these journalists managed to do all of this while maintaining the kind of secrecy necessary for them to be able to process the information and to consider its meaning and its implications out of public view.  The public, media, and official reaction of the last few days make clear why this secrecy was necessary.

One thing that would be interesting to hear a story on would be what measures were taken to ensure the security of the process.  What sorts of technological tools were employed?  What sorts of social tools?  Did participants have to sign confidentiality agreements?   What prevented a rogue reporter from reporting on the reporters reporting?

Friday, November 12, 2010

Work Slowdown in Soc of Info

Readers,

Have been swamped with teaching and administrative work of late, and trying to spend two days a week at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences has me on a slow blogging output these days.

Am working on pieces on forms (the kind you fill out) as rationalizing filters and "information interaction protocols," the assumptions behind pending online-privacy proposals (from Commerce and FTC), the soc of info implications of the story of the CIA official knew that a Jordanian contact was a problem (a la double agent -- he later blew himself up at a remote CIA location), and what it means when we make moral judgments about people's ignorance of some thing (as in, "she didn't even know what hip-hop was!").

Meanwhile, thanks for reading. Would love to read any comments you might have -- are there there?

Cheers,

Dan