WikiLeaks and the Culture of Classification

... Instead of seeking to weed out the overclassified material and concentrate on protecting the truly sensitive information, the culture of classification reacts by using the WikiLeaks cases as justification for continuing to classify information at the highest possible levels and for sharing the intelligence it generates with fewer people. The ultimate irony is that the WikiLeaks cases will help strengthen and perpetuate the broken system that helped lead to the disclosures in the first place.

I think the above is characteristic of this phase of informationalism: organizational routines that formerly provided solutions are now stiffening to the point where they become problems in themselves. In this case, the ability to set up and manage huge encrypted networks leads to the overextension of classification even as it multiplies the opportunities for leaks. The interesting thing is, the dynamic is totally legible but nothing will be done about it: too many people have made careers setting up the systems, too much equipment has been bought, too much time has been spent inculcating a culture of secrecy, and even though all the above are not really productive, they represent a fixed capital that becomes a barrier to innovation. In short, we have entered the sclerotic phase of informationalism. The same thing can be seen in the financial markets: high-frequency trading works great, it makes the traders and investment banks very rich, it's totally unproductive, it can only produce more and worse crises, and there is no sign whatsoever that it will stop. I like Felix's idea that that Wikileaks is exacerbating dysfunctional organizational tendencies. It's probably an involuntary effect, but hey, you know that when you massively break a barrier of secrecy in this way, you are gonna produce some kind of welcome effects. This observation should be coupled with the one Felix makes in his excellent Mute magazine article: "People are asked to identify personally with organisations who can either no longer carry historical projects worthy of major sacrifices or expressly regard their employees as nothing but expendable, short-term resources. This, I think, creates the cognitive dissonance that justifies, perhaps even demands, the leaker to violate procedure and actively damage the organisation of which he, or she, has been at some point a well-acculturated member." That's a formula, not just for leaks, but for generalized low-level employee sabotage, i.e. the neoliberal manager's worst nightmare. In response, the entire social system stiffens, security panic sets in and gradually, the nightmare becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the way the great technologial and organizational paradigms like Fordism or Informationalism come to their end, not with a bang but with a slow deflating hiss of discontent from millions of disgruntled and exploited underlings. One can only hope that some dynamic of visionary change arises in counterpoint to this process of slow decay. Or rather: one can take heart in the slow decay, and move quicker on the vision thing! best, BH # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE