*On teh Internets*

There are good reasons to support the actions of Wikileaks. Transparency in government is something we should all support, as our daily lives are affected constantly by the decisions that lawmakers enact, supposedly on our behalf. Our government should be accountable to the people it serves. Far too often this is not the case.

I also fundamentally believe that multinational corporations should be subject to intense scrutiny, especially where product safety, business ethics and environmental impact are concerned. When the rumored trove of Wikileaks documents about corporate malfeasance break, I will gleefully await the day corporate America’s feet are held to the fire. I think that large enterprise has too much power and should feel the heat from time time.

There are also, however, reasons why Wikileaks is an unmitigated disaster, and Cablegate is both irresponsible and potentially dangerous both to America’s national security interests and global stability.

It’s true that the contents of the pilfered cables were accessible to 2.5 million people, which hardly classifies them as “secret,” but no one had gone as far as the alleged perpetrator Army private, Bradley Manning, in undermining the classified nature of the State Department cables.

The information, suspicion and banter contained within them may have been common knowledge in diplomatic circles, but it is one thing to suspect people are talking about you behind your back, it’s another when you know it, and it’s there in official correspondence. Furthermore, now that news of the leak has circled the globe many times, what is or is not in the cables is starting to cause a bit of a fuss. In Pakistan, which enjoys a special, but tense diplomatic and military relationship with the U.S., fake cables have been circulating in the local press which paint India in a a very bad light, as an intentional instigator in Balochistan and Waziristan, conflicts which are beyond the control of the the Pakistani army and very relevant to the Pakistani people. One cannot help but wonder what other fake cables may arise, and what their impact may be. The toothpaste is out of the tube, so to speak, and it won’t be going back in.

Ultimately, I think that Cablegate is an irresponsible headline grabber because as the video above makes clear, Americans know little about the world in which we live, and they clearly could care less. Most average Americans couldn’t find Libya on a map, so why would they care about Gen. Muamar Qadafi, except that he gets botox. The tabloid nature of the revelations is the only reason why anyone cares. Juicy gossip about Saudi princess hosting lavish parties with alcohol and prostitutes makes for interesting water cooler talk, but it will quickly be replaced by the next Kanye mishap, Monday Night Football, or the suicide of Bernie Madoff’s son Mark over the weekend.

Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Yesterday’s arrest of Julian Assange and the escalating harassment of his organization, Wikileaks, has proven many things, among them, the power of information, and how nasty things can get for those whose business it is to pry the lid off closely-guarded secrets.

While pundits, commentators, bloggers and the Internet as a whole debate the efficacy of the latest Wikileaks bombshell, Cablegate, one thing can be certain, Legacy Media benefits tremendously from the document dumps, while the journalists of the future have already sprinted ahead.

Wikileaks will not change journalism. Instead the fracases over Cablegate demonstrates how the economics of journalism have already changed the business of reporting, and the resultant product. If the 251,000 documents being released were originally pilfered as early as May of 2010 by Army private, Bradley Manning, as is suspected it is somewhat laughable that a group of distributed volunteers could keep such a juicy secret bottled up and away from the professional press for so long.

Organizations like Wikileaks, or groups with a similar agenda will have a role to play in the future of journalism, regardless of what happens to Wikileaks founder Assange, who is now in British custody, awaiting extradition to Sweden. However the future of journalism belongs to those who can use social media, devices like the iPad, location technologies and a suite of tools that make storytelling more rich, more communal and more locally relevant, while simultaneously empowering millions to join the conversation. That is the future of journalism, and the aim of the documentary and website of The Future Journalism Project is to capture the transformation that is underway. The future of journalism is being shaped by the convergence of tools and tales, both the medium of expression, what is now possible to express thanks to technologies that are becoming ubiquitous.

Aside from a few clever infographics and word clouds, little has been done with the information from the cables which demonstrate the power of new media story telling tools. (The term ‘new media’ is somewhat of a misnomer, as many of the tools and techniques are not new, but there are many mashups of existing technologies, as well as new tools that are being created every day that bring with them tremendous potential to change how stories are told and consumed)

Cablegate wordcloud from Fast Company

Today’s Guardian headline says it all; “US cable leaks spark global diplomatic crisis,” and demonstrates why Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is not long for this world.

Like a fly buzzing the ear of the world’s most powerful nations, Assange is bound to get swatted, and it will look like an accident when it happens. Surely the day is not far off.