The whole world is talking about WikiLeaks, and the drama has reached its peak with the arrest of Julian Assange. The leaked diplomatic documents are obviously a major thing, something that could change the world as we know it. The main battleground of this conflict is cyberspace, where troops of different armies are already fully ready for combat. WikiLeaks.org is currently offline, being a constant target of attacks of all sorts. But the civil initiative is striking back, putting hundreds of mirrors online (even Slovenia has one!), and hacking the bank that closed Julian's account. Even the good boy Twitter is behaving weirdly, denying accusations of censoring #wikileaks as trending topic.
We've seen similar cyber battles before. The Anonymous (who are also defending WikiLeaks) had their fun with the Church of Scientology and Google had its showdown with China. But WikiLeaks is a probably a few levels higher. I always said that internet could be the main tool of the next revolutions, because information travels really fast and it's almost impossible to prevent it from spreading once it's out. But the problem with the Wikileaks situation is that it may be too much for our society to handle. Diplomacy was exposed, which means the current political situation, already in a weak equilibrium because of the upcoming shift in global power, will struggle to digest the information presented by WikiLeaks. And there's more to come.
All of this is probably history in the making, because we have never seen an event of this sort going so mainstream. And while we wondered if the blind woman's prophecy about World War 3 starting in November 2010 was about the Koreas, we might have missed the point. This could be the start of a civil revolution or even a real war, in which governments would surely have problems identifying hackers and double agents inside their ranks. I have mixed feeling about it myself, it's simply too overwhelming. But the general reaction of people, now matter how dangerous and foolish the revelation may be, clearly shows disappointment and lack of belief in the current "democratic" system. Are you ready for a new world?