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Luminous Animal

(27,310 posts)
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 04:00 PM Oct 2014

When Google Met Wikileaks. Long excerpt from Assange's book in Newsweek.

Some very interesting stuff and a reminder of why I quit Google.


http://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-279447

Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, arrived from America at Ellingham Hall, the country house in Norfolk, England where Assange was living under house arrest.

For several hours the besieged leader of the world’s most famous insurgent publishing organization and the billionaire head of the world’s largest information empire locked horns. The two men debated the political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions engendered by the global network—from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin.

They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet’s future that has only gathered force subsequently.

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When Google Met Wikileaks. Long excerpt from Assange's book in Newsweek. (Original Post) Luminous Animal Oct 2014 OP
This is a great analogy... adirondacker Oct 2014 #1

adirondacker

(2,921 posts)
1. This is a great analogy...
Sat Oct 25, 2014, 12:20 PM
Oct 2014

"But as Google Ideas shows, the company’s “philanthropic” efforts, too, bring it uncomfortably close to the imperial side of U.S. influence. If Blackwater/Xe Services/Academi was running a program like Google Ideas, it would draw intense critical scrutiny. But somehow Google gets a free pass."

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