August, 2009
If knowledge is power then I want to be the electric company.
I was reading this article about a software developer, Sergey Aleynikov, who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly stealing a portion of code from Goldman Sachs. He was eventually released on a $750,000 bond.
The code was a program that, in “ultrafast” (NY Times used the word. Wasn’t really my idea.) world of computerized stock trading, compromising the expensive software might have cost Goldman Sachs upwards of $8,000,000,000 in damages.
Then there was this doctor that I read about, James Heilman, who’s peers were fighting to have investigated by his local doctors’ organization because he published the 10 inkblots of the Rorschach test on Wikipedia.
His peers have argued that releasing the inkblots will diminish the effectiveness of the test.
Fearing that such widespread exposure would increase the likelihood that patients may have potentially seen and/or studied the test beforehand and will arrive with answers already prepared.
The first “decision” to “liberate” information resulted in a group of corporate-thugs sending the goons after a employee who allegedly tried taking a little more than a few notepads, pens and a stapler on his last day.
The second decision to liberate information resulted in a mob of angry shrinks descending on a guy who was allegedly trying to demystify the world of psychoanalysis.
Both men affected the flow of information and information, by extension, is power. But which is more powerful?
A bit of code that might be worth around $8 billion hidden away on some German file-server? Or the inkblots that, theoretically give everyone incredible insight into the psychoanalytical decisions of psychiatrists and psychologists and, are being referred to in an article by the New York Times, hosted by Wikipedia and linked to by 11,000+ blogs?
∞