Technology & Innovation — January 28, 2011

Wikileaks: Has the Truth Freed Us?

The aim of the WikiLeaks revelations was not just to embarrass those in power but to lead us to mobilise ourselves to bring about a different functioning of power.

bigthinkeditor

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

This is precisely our situation today: we face the shameless cynicism of a global order whose agents only imagine that they believe in their ideas of democracy, human rights and so on. Through actions like the WikiLeaks disclosures, the shame – our shame for tolerating such power over us – is made more shameful by being publicised. When the US intervenes in Iraq to bring secular democracy, and the result is the strengthening of religious fundamentalism and a much stronger Iran, this is not the tragic mistake of a sincere agent, but the case of a cynical trickster being beaten at his own game.

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Technology & Innovation

U.S. Diplomatic Cables Leak

The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment. It is for governments to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks’ revelations.

Technology & Innovation

WikiLeaks’ Record Release

In the greatest leak in the history of the United States military, WikiLeaks plans to publish 391,832 classified documents on the Iraq on the Internet.

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Hard Science

The Arecibo Message fifty years later

In November 1974, astronomers used the radio telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory to send a hello to the universe.

Bronze statue of a bearded man embodying stoicism, riding a horse with one arm extended forward, set against a black background.

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Why our “weak-tie” connections are actually super-strong

Sure, “who you know” matters — but your best contacts will be the ones you don’t know very well.

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