Wikileaks and Digital Renaissance

This is a followup of my earlier thoughts on Cablegate...

I had few fundamental questions in my mind about the implications of Cablegate on the Enterprises. Wikileaks , in my mind is very akin to what hotmail did to the world of emails and what iPod did to the mp3 players. The concept was not new, but it started a new era where the core concept found acceptance and evolved exponentially.

Julian Assange and his spirited team have taught us that we are living in an era of Openness. We leave trails of our thoughts all over the digital world. The world, its netizens and the organisations are more wired than ever. Whilst being closely wired has brought it great benefits of transparency , faster access to the information; unfortunately it has its byproducts as well which we are witnessing through the recent dawn of Wikileaks.

Like how the medieval European era progressed to the great Colonisation and Industrial revolution after the renaissance, we are just stepping into a digital renaissance era.
If we do a rewind of the time by few centuries and land up in Florence, Tuscany around 14th century and take a peek at what is going on , there are plenty of lessons to learn. The pages of 14th century Italy is one of the most glamorous pages of the human civilisation. It was a tipping point for many events that unfolded  and pushed the entire world to the newer dimensions.

A very practical example would that of our very own lives. If somebody had mentioned to me about what he/she could find about me by a simple googling, 5 years back, I would have simply laughed it off. The reality now is completely different , there are more information available about me (which i post in multiple sites) that my close friend may know not about me. This is a new reality, this is not going to change.

What does this mean for an Enterprise?

Primarily the employees are going to be talking more about themselves and their work in various social networking site. Your employees , collegues [and you] are very likely to lose a smartphone device which has lot of information about your company.Inspite of the huge spends on the security software, hackers are going to resort more to the social engineering than breaking their heads off to sneak in to your servers.

What would/could emerge?

Enterprise 4.0 is going to be more open. It is going to be aligned to our life styles in the digital world than resembling to the current state of traditional organisation which worked well in the pre-digital era.

The Enterprise 4.0 should cope up with the fast emerging technology and hence needs to be built on the closest way we react to the external information.

This is going to be a new digital renaissance and we better buckle up!

Cablegate : To speak or Not to Speak!

Looks like a complete new order of the day is unfolding right infront of us thanks to Assange.

He has sparked off a wild fire that is growing so wild that nobody in the international political limelight is left unscathed. A huge repository of 251,287 diplomatic cables that were secured by wikileaks from a US mole (?) is defining the new order of the day where meaning of Privacy , Secrecy , Confidentiality are getting redefined.

In an era where we have grown to become more reliant on the devices that technology has gifted us, we leave a digital trail everywhere. When this trail gets to the unintended hands , the guarded privacy is lost. This gives raise to two questions?

Should we just get used to it and be more cautious?

Should we try to develop more sophisticated mechanisms to keep the secret a secret?

I think the probability of the latter is very unlikely as the technology sophistication are getting out of hand and there is simply no way we could catch up the privacy stealers. What ever Assange's cause may be, the very notion of what you speak could be out in public as soon as possible makes our spines chill. Internet and various associated technologies are going to get only better and hackers are going to get only sophisticated!

At the same time, these leaks give a notice to the wrong doers and sinisters that they cannot be in the hiding forever. The powerful lights of technology would search them and bring them to the moonlight.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the brave new world where you need to be Open , Honest and speak good things else you would be online for wrong reasons in no time.... and Assagne is only a beginning