the corner office

I don't know what I think about the Wikileaks saga. Anyone who's read a spy novel or thriller or two knows our uneventful lives plod along thanks to lots of stuff that happens out of sight and out of mind. I think the world would be a better place with some dirty laundry aired, but is it true for everything in the laundry bag?

This, however, does put it in perspective:

Nor is the material classified top secret, being at a level that more than 3 million US government employees are cleared to see, and available on the defence department's internal Siprnet.

So anyone who's read a spy novel or thriller or two knows that any country with a halfway competent intelligence service knows all about what the USA thinks about them, already. The publicity might be embarassing, and the public glare may yield some interesting outcomes in future, but unless the mobs start upping pitchforks, calling it a 'global diplomatic crisis' is probably pushing things a bit. Lots of people doing the dance and protesting on cue, and then business as (sort-of) usual.

There are two things I wonder about. The first is how soon it will be (if not already) before governments start 'leaking' what they want people to see? Second, this is 250,000 documents, these sorts of leaks are just the start of what it means to live in the Information Age. There's already too much data for us to digest, where to from here?