I’ve just got around to finishing “The Revolution Will be Digitised” by Heather Brooke. Whilst it greatly increases my understanding of Wikileaks, Julian Assange and the author’s own role in making public some of the contents of the Wikileaks, I primarily appreciated the final chapter “A Brave New World” and the “Afterword to the Paperback Edition”, since this is not old news but an ongoing story that is far from complete. If anyone wants to understand why we should not trust governments or big business and those who run them, that final chapter says much of it for me. Whilst Conservatives and neo-cons go on about ending ‘big government’, that is not the issue, but people like them are, who want to conceal the truth and manipulate the world around us to enable them to make big profits. Brooke is not inferring that the revolution will be digitised, just that the new media can play a powerful role in social change when in the right hands.
A book that tells a similar story is Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism“, which will equally make you feel concerned about the megalomaniacs who appear to be involved in society at all levels and places. A broader story than Brooke’s but perhaps the reason why we should be advised by Brooke about making sure that the common people have control of the internet. I don’t agree with her final analysis in comparing before and after the Enlightenment with what is going on, for as she says in the previous chapter the world is not that simple, and the Enlightenment had been brewing for hundreds of years before 1650, as is demonstrated in another excellent read – Diarmaid MacCulloch’s “Reformation“.
The Great E-mancipator 