Editor's Note 12/7

Story by Jacob Zlomke 

| Published Dec 7, 2010

Let’s think about the Internet. It really is an incredible thing. It’s a working record of everything that’s happened the past 20 years. Consider this: a couple days ago I was so vain and so bored as to extend my Facebook page back to it’s beginnings in 2007. That’s three years of internet history, and, while really interesting, I wouldn’t recommend it if you get self-conscious thinking about who you were sophomore year of high school.

The Internet is akin to the printing press. Because of the printing press, mass amounts of text information became available and recorded history became a lot more dependable. Well, historians 250 years from now will have a similar advantage when looking back on our lives today because everyone will have a Google record, a personally recorded history of Internet activity, an almost exhaustive log of their interests.

And this mass amount of information isn’t extended to just your personal life. No matter what governments and personalities try to do to defend information from free-flowing, internet geeks will always be one step ahead. This is an information revolution, and no one can stop it.

In a more specific sense, I’m talking about Wikileaks here and the surrounding controversy. World leaders and talking heads are scrambling over what to do about the site that leaks government documents from around the world. The website has most notably released documents like Guantanamo Bay’s operating manual from 2003 and the Afghan War Diary.

President Obama has yet to take a strong stance against Wikileaks or founder Julian Assange, as many foreign leaders have, saying that he’s “concerned.” But Obama is being consistent. When on tour in China, Obama spoke at length on the importance of Internet freedom and access to information for all. And he’s right.

Regardless of what Wikileaks has released, the site stands for something greater than its parts: governmental transparency, keeping our world leaders honest. Wikileaks is stepping into a role to be filled. Journalists and talking pundits get upset at Wikileaks but that’s because in the past decade, journalists have failed to do their job of reporting government operations, and the website is now better at their job than they are, and for free.

Maybe it’s not fair that controversial documents are shared without the government’s consent, but maybe it’s not fair that governments have things they need to hide. If a democratic government as “free” as ours wants to operate effectively, things like Wikileaks are important. The government can’t be expected to let its citizens in on every detail of operations, especially the unfavorable ones, but an avenue for openness is pertinent.

Our opinions of people in our day to day life generally aren’t predicated on our interactions with them alone. How they interact with other people, things we’ve heard they’ve done play into it as well. As it should work for government too. It’s common knowledge that on the campaign trail, politicians lie and embellish, and it’s not like that’s going to change once they get elected, so our opinion’s of how our leaders are working shouldn’t be based explicitly on what they decide to reveal.

Open information sources like Wikileaks protect the foundation of our country’s governmental principles: keeping an open, honest, information-based government of the people. And I don’t think the framers of the Constitution would have it any other way. So here’s to you, Julian Assange. Keep doing your thing and “don’t let the bastards grind you down.”