Heather Brooke’s latest book takes a long, hard, look at the battle for open information in the digital era, and offers a difficult critique of how governments might still just about be winning. The fascinating narrative of the Wikileaks Afghan war logs, Iraq war logs, and Cablegate data leaks, and the effect on all those involved, is threaded through the book.
The vital point is this: the open nature of the internet, that you probably appreciate if you are reading this blog, can be used for good or evil. Governments can use technology to be more transparent, or they can use it to spy on, and suppress, their citizens. It might seem obvious, but it needs someone like Brooke to eloquently drive the point home.
Unsurprisingly the Guardian journalists who turned the leaks into stories, and co-ordinated a worldwide journalistic project writing up the data, come out looking very good. Interestingly, for all Wikileaks digital capability, it was old media techniques that were required to turn the reams of data into something meaningful. However, Julian Assange does not emerge as the open data hero he would like us to believe. He appears to be little more than a reckless, narcissistic ego-maniac, and a misogynist to boot.
Pleasingly, Brooke takes the time to look at internet, nerd and digital culture, as a whole, instead of just talking about one website. I personally found the idea of “hackerspaces”, explored early on, fascinating. If hackers can create communal areas to learn and problem solve, could bloggers do a similar thing to develop stories, ideas, and share data?
Brooke’s investigation is thorough too, with her case backed up strongly by expertise from the computer security, open data, and hacker communities. You don’ though have to be a member of those communities in order to learn something from “The Revolution Will Be Digitised”, as she writes in a in a non-jargnoistic way. The story at the book’s core is utterly absorbing, and when Brooke’s shifts into a fictional style to detail Private 1st Class Bradley Manning’s situation, (Manning is the supposed leaker,) the change not only helps keep the reader’s attention, but adds a vital human touch to a technological story.
I found “The Revolution will be Digitised” utterly inspiring. It is an excellent expose of one of the key issues of the day, and essential 21st century reading.
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