The unbearable levity of Wikileaks and the right to dance

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I received the following comment on my last post:

So previously, you did not think that globalization and instant communication tools were radiically changing the world?  It wasn't until wikileaks that you realized this was happening? Helloooo?  

To which I am tempted to reply with the old French proverb:

"Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose."

Strangely enough, I think the world has changed very little because of this glut of eavesdropping... we are just getting to see "how the sausages are made"... and it won't make a bit of difference if we know or not... Unless we all decide to become vegetarians. To eat sausages is to be complicit in making of the sausages.

I am much more impressed by the civil disturbances in France, Greece, Italy and the UK than by denial of service attacks on a credit card company. Thinking that you can "change the world" at the click of a mouse is the height of couch potato-ism.
 

I am convinced that only things that actually bring people out into the streets have meaning anymore: school fees, reduction of pensions and unemployment insurance.

We are flooded with "information", scandals, lies and cupidity ... We see it all and cluck, "tsk, tsk".... or write  few righteous lines in our blog or a scathing comment on someone else's, then we go and vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum... and four years later go and vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee. We change channel. We change our brand of aftershave.

Speaking of quaint foreign proverbs, there is a rather horrible Spanish one that affirms that you cannot deny a man who is being hanged the right to his little dance...            

At the end of the rope.

Wikileaks is such a little dance.

What have we really discovered with the Wikileaks data-dump besides the knowledge that some of America's most sensitive diplomatic information is at the mercy of someone who signs himself, "Bradass"?

America is decadent. That is news?

What can this enormous fund of data teach us?

Perhaps we have found out that Santa Claus does not exist?

That Mommy and Daddy bring the presents?

Santa or no Santa, do we still want to see all that loot under the tree at Christmas?

You bet we do!

So globalization and instant communication tools are radically changing the world?  

Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose. DS