Disruptive Proactivity

This book is about wikileaks, in the same way EastEnders is about the East End of London, or Friends was about New York. It’s mostly about transparency, online activism, and actually achieving a better democracy. Sometimes the best way is to start by knocking hard on the front door, but sometimes you need wikileaks going commando through an upstairs window.

It was one the first books about Wikileaks published after cablegate, and feels more of a well written, passionate call to arms than it is a book on cablegate. But then that’s what Micah says it is – it’s a personal narrative of where we are and some of how we got here, and a few discussions on where we might be going. I suspect the second version of this in however long will not include “wikileaks” in the title.

For those who don’t really have a good idea what the current transparency agenda is, how it relates to wikileaks, and what it’s actually for, it’s a good book. Many of the anecdotes and names are familiar (mySociety gets named a fair bit, with a special mention for Julian Todd and UNdemocracy).

But the thing that I got most from the book, is the support of many people, working in different places, at different times, whose names we don’t know. The little projects that Tony knows of, but go unheard amongst the much wider community who deserve to hear them.

Here’s one story, the highlighted bits are in blue, the primary bit being the first quote:

And that’s the one big lesson I got from Micah’s book, is this: Transparency work has effects you could never imagine.