2010

2010′s best WL coverage. Earlier this month I reprised my annual search for the year’s most influential reflections on technology and media.

I was particularly curious to learn who was provoking thinking for one of the year’s biggest stories, Wikileaks. I received feedback from friends, colleagues and strangers via email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora and on this blog. Here’s a summary of the Wikileaks wisdom sent my way. Two blogs posts were mentioned more than any others. Over the last two weeks of the year several people have highlighted Bruce Sterling’s Wikileaks and Jaron Lanier’s Wikileaks posts; David Cohn highlighted Gabriella Coleman’s response to Sterling.

CBS overview. WikiLeaks has brought to light a series of disturbing insinuations and startling truths in the last year, some earth-shattering, others simply confirmations of our darkest suspicions about the way the world works.

Thanks to founder Julian Assange's legal situation in Sweden (and potentially the United States) as well as his media grandstanding, it is easy to forget how important and interesting some of WikiLeaks' revelations have been. WikiLeaks revelations from 2010 have included simple gossip about world leaders: Russia's PM Vladimir Putin is playing Batman to President Dmitri Medvedev's Robin; Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is crazy and was once slapped by a Revolutionary Guard chief for being so; Libya's Col.

Revelations WL 2010. Throughout this year I’ve devoted substantial attention to WikiLeaks, particularly in the last four weeks as calls for its destruction intensified.

To understand why I’ve done so, and to see what motivates the increasing devotion of the U.S. Government and those influenced by it to destroying that organization, it’s well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year: the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world’s most powerful factions. As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing.