<story><title>Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks</title><url>http://www.newsweek.com/julian-assange-why-i-founded-wikileaks-294283</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>xnull2guest</author><text>This goes to some lengths to explain why Assange is willing to publish anything, no matter how damaging in the short term it may be to particular interests.&lt;p&gt;He doesn&amp;#x27;t want to be a curator or a decision maker about what information is or is not available. He is interested in solving the architectural problem of &lt;i&gt;removing&lt;/i&gt; the ability to having political interests or personal bias influence control what gets published. From his perspective, he is merely a cog in that system he&amp;#x27;s trying to create - an automaton who doesn&amp;#x27;t get to make decisions about the content of diplomatic cables, etc.&lt;p&gt;In this sense it&amp;#x27;s probably better to think of Assange as an engineer as opposed to a journalist, dissident or politician. It&amp;#x27;s just that this system he&amp;#x27;s been trying to create crosses those circles - when the system effects knowledge&amp;#x2F;power relations and to the degree his system is successful what&amp;#x27;s left to do is to effect Wikileaks.&lt;p&gt;Another note: I am in agreement with and happy that Assange recognizes that Wikileaks in a young and incomplete prototype. There are tons of operational questions left: Who gets Wikileaks when Assange passes away? How do you vet a new member? How do you prevent bribery? Isn&amp;#x27;t it a problem that there is any centralized control of Wikileaks to begin with? Countries have been successful in preventing journalists from partnering with Wikileaks - how does one secure that pipeline?</text></comment>
<story><title>Julian Assange: Why I Founded WikiLeaks</title><url>http://www.newsweek.com/julian-assange-why-i-founded-wikileaks-294283</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kauffj</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Therefore the only playing field left is: what do they have and what do they know?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This portrays people as something akin to a Markov process: if you know these two properties, you can make meaningful predictions about the future. Are people so memoryless? It strikes me that at a minimum, history, experience, and culture would all influence behavior and aren&amp;#x27;t so neatly stateful.</text></comment>