Heather Brooke: The Revolution Will Be Digitised

Brooke, Heather.  2011.  The Revolution Will Be Digitised (London: William Heinemann)

The information flow events of 2010 through Heather Brookes’ prism: Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, Julian Assange.  Simultaneously a snapshot of a pivotal moment in journalism, an account of how paper and web combined, collaborated and then fought for control of an ultimately uncontrollable story, and a fascinating insight into the hubristic actions of a charismatic individual (Assange) who started to forget that he was the messenger and not the story and whose actions began to undo the good he thought he was doing.   These current events are interweaved with a potted history of hacking, of investigative journalism and whistleblowing, as well as pertinent observations on the information society, on definitions of privacy in an online world, and the developing roles and functions of the internet and the organisations, private and public, who seem to forget that the trust we place in them is contingent.