> Technology keeps lowering the "transaction costs" of making social
> institutions less opaque.
As Doug has pointed out, CSPAN broadcasts every (mindnumbing) detail of the legislative institutions, but that transparency has coexisted with their rapidly increasing suckiness.
Or, as Tiqqun says, "We do not want more transparency or more democracy. There's already enough. On the contrary - we want more opacity."
> The driving factor is the communist impulse
> to have whatever affects the public interest out there in the public
> view, subject to public debate and -- ultimately -- to people's
> democratic control.
Having things "out there" does not mean people can control them.
> IMO, this is a huge breakthrough -- its
> ideological implications (which is to say, its practical political
> implications) will prove to be huge.
You assume that because some things have (allegedly) been revealed, the political consequences will be significant. But none of the stuff I've heard so far presents a novel body of facts. The problem isn't that people don't know this stuff; the problem is that even though we know, we have no idea what to do about it. It's a problem of imagination, not knowledge.
Wikileaks seems like 250,000 pages of gossip to me. Not that I'm opposed to gossip. But I like it distilled, and with pictures. And to be about Jennifer Aniston, not Angela Merkel.