The role of social networks on social memory

Jack Dikian

April 2011

The event of new media such as social networks, blogs, and emerging on-demand access to content will increasingly impact upon how we, and societies at large will remember and forget – the construct of social memory.

Social memory helps define us, our cultural group and patterns of behavior, ritual, social norms and practices. This takes many forms including religion, mythology, history, cultural practices and derive their form and meaning from accepted world views.

Social memory also plays a pivotal role in social behaviors, from mating behaviors to cooperative behaviors based on reciprocal altruism.

Meanwhile, humans are known to show a social stress response during face-to-face social interactions. Social stress acutely impairs social memory during social interaction while interpersonal trust reduces social stress response. How social stress responses are moderated when contact is increasingly online while the overall formation of and recall of social or collective memory will be more democratized than any other time in history.

Inside WikiLeaks - book review

Jack Dikian

April 2011

As we know WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit organization publishing submissions of private, secret, and classified material from anonymous sources such as news sources and whistleblowers. Over time, the original wiki-based approach that allowed "the entire global community" to participate, edit, and comment has given way to WikiLeaks giving exclusives to only a handful of mainstream media organizations.

Besides WikiLeaks winning coveted praise from important human rights organizations and established media outlets, it has also come into controversy and criticism.

Among the awards WikiLeaks received The Economist's New Media Award, Amnesty International's UK Media Award, and the New York City Daily News listing WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news".

WikiLeaks, and in particular its founder Julian Assange has also encountered a barrage of criticism, including a profile in the New York Times that used language such as "erratic and imperious behavior" and "a nearly delusional grandeur” after Wikileaks' disclosure of Iraq and Afghan war files. Anger in U.S. political circles continues to grow with some commentators calling for the U.S. government to find a way to pull the plug on the group's Web site after [it] began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

I picked up a copy of "Inside WikiLeaks, my time with Julian Assange at the world’s most dangerous website” one early morning while killing a bit of time before a meeting. I was surprised it was so heavily discounted given that it was published only a few months ago.

The author Daniel Domscheit-Berg worked with WikiLeaks for three years and probably worked closer with Assange than anyone else at the organization. I say probably because as we learn from Domscheit-Berg that while WikiLeaks made its name exposing the personal, company and government correspondence Mr. Assange lived a clandestine existence. Domscheit-Berg himself wasn’t quite sure, who other than himself and Assange was actively involved in the organization.

The story Domscheit-Berg tells is inviting and from a very personal perspective – discussing with great detail his working relationship with Assange, his habits, his strengths, and the many, perhaps, less complimentary behaviors Domscheit-Berg felt he needed to accept and manage.

As Domscheit-Berg’s story unfolds the reader begins to get the sense that the relationship between himself and Assange wasn’t going to end well. For example, Domscheit-Berg writes “He did not want to share the spotlight with anyone”. When Domscheit-Berg gave a rare interview about WikiLeaks. Assange accused him of “being a media whore”.