Top Secret

WikiLeaks has become very fashionable lately, but in reality has been operating since 2007, fame has come as almost always through a scandal, as the leakage of secret documents from the U.S.

 

WikiLeaks could be described as a portal of leaks, which ensures the anonymity of the source and set up in order to report unethical and abusive conducts of dictatorships, and other organizations, but as seen also in democratic countries, since in democracies with alleged free press there are taboo subjects that can not be touched without fear of reprisals from the power and the powerful people; so it seems a great idea to "filter" news anonymously, without fear of reprisal. We might think that is the ideal way to circumvent censorship.

The problem arises when those leaks bother to governments or powerful organizations, which seem to be reacting in different ways as to imprison its guardian Mr. Julian Assange and it seems is becoming a headache for the managers of this site and this consists in "false leaks" from groups interested in discrediting WikiLeaks, arguing, once denounced the falsehoods, that whatever is published is false.

But this is only just beginning, so we'll see where they move in the future, we will be watchful, to distinguish the truths of the poisoning, but seeing the great role of many media, supposedly free, but always ready to wash the face of the power.

The Connected TV

McLuhan argued that " in our age and for the first time in history, enter in the collective public mind had become a full time business for many. The current objective of this task is to enter to manipulate, exploit, control the movement of information, which has become by far the largest industry in the world. "

To illustrate this we have to point that only in Spain, in 2009 the digital content industry exceeded 8000 million euros; that from 2003 to 2009 the sector has almost tripled its turnover.

This also affects to sectors such as trade, as in 2009 digital commerce in Spain grew by 16%, which also affects the advertising industry with an increase in online advertising for the same period by 7% and a decrease in conventional advertising by 15%. It seems that in this moment the 50% of the press that is read is already in digital form; about two million people in Spain have a blog and about seven million read them regularly.

All these data seem to indicate where the shots will go in the future, but only make a trend, even if we consider that a large proportion of the population have no internet nor plan to have it, especially the very elderly population.

Talk about the future is one of the fastest ways of making a mistake, even an internet guru like Guy Kawasaki, asked in an interview during his visit to FICOD 2010, maintained that it was impossible to predict the future of the internet to twenty years or even five years, but the data we have now it seems that will continue to develop digital media and it seems that the star project at the moment is the connected TV.

The connected TV is just to have the TV connected to the network; said in this way it seems very easy, but it has a technical complexity and high costs that require a new model of partnerships between operators, as in the case of Spain they are already doing in this direction RTVE and Telefonica.

This new model of Connected-TV seems the short term future, with the birth of new media giants such as might arise from partnerships between the major television channels and the Internet ones, which shows once again how fast is going this media market, as we have just begun to enjoy the DTT and is already outdated, if is not connected.

Dictatorships don´t like surfing

Something as simple as double clicking the icon for your favorite web browser can become a high-risk if we have the misfortune of live in a dictatorship as China or Cuba, just for give your opinion in  a social network they can condemn you to go in prison, and the penalty can be up to fifteen years.

This kind of regimes have different methods to prevent internet access, in Cuba is not allowed to have internet in indiavidual households, only professionals like doctors and they can use pages just to professional consultation. In China it is even more complicated, there are used filters and hackers to block every kind of information and data not suitable for the government.

http://www.misionlandia.com.ar/index.php/technology-and-science/internet/19400-china-prohibe-ahora-skype.html

But despite such restrictions, these barriers have cracks through which seeps the ingenuity and the desire for freedom of oppressed populations as was demonstrated by the recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Hopefully these cracks will move in the direction of freedom and not change from one dictatorship to another.

Problems and Situation of the Media

It comes to me a bit of vertigo if I try to analyze the media´s problems, and even more if I think to their future expectative. And this is caused by the speed at which media grow.

Such is the speed of their development that we have had already technical problems with the network capacity, the familiar problem of bandwidth, as demand soars exponentially and reminds me in part to the problem of vehicular traffic road, when a highway is designed, the models of traffic growth often fall short for that area and once the highway is opened, this is already small.

The development of new technologies not only affects the telephone or the television, it is affecting also to the most traditional media like newspapers, because of the continued development of digital newspapers. These ones have more penetration in society, since these are easily accessible news that develop in real time and allow us to compare the same news on multiple media. This happens also with the Internet radio or through the DTT.

As always, not everything is perfect, and it is difficult if not impossible that in this kind of new culture we might call the culture of the optical fiber, we find the concept of classical culture of the Frankfurt School, which held: "Humanity is immersed in barbarism. Barbarism is the starting point, scientific progress does not compensate for the increasing decline of theoretical culture. "