Wikileaks

The whistleblower Web site, Wikileaks, is becoming increasingly controversial as a hub for classified documents and video. At the 2010 TEDGlobal conference last Friday in England, TED's Chris Anderson interviewed the elusive, Australian founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, who is reportedly being sought for questioning by U.S. authorities. [A controversial figure, Assange has been criticized by some who question whether his site's publication of top-secret documents is reckless and does more harm than good. Others have lauded Assange and his work; Amnesty International last year gave him its International Media Award for public service.]

Here's an excerpt of the TEDGlobal Q&A:

Chris Anderson: It's been reported that Wikileaks, your baby, has -- in the last few years -- released more classified documents than the rest of the world's media. Can that possibly be true?

Julian Assange: Yeah, can it possibly be true? It's a worry, isn't it, that the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job, that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world's press combined.

Here's the video of the full interview, released today by TED:

(Illustration, top, by Brandon Lauftenberg, for istock.com)

Story Corps

At this past week's TEDGlobal 2010 conference in Oxford, the former diplomat and international relations professor Joseph Nye said that in modern-day diplomacy, "it is the story and the narrative that now wins (conflicts). Great powers have great stories." True enough, but fellow TED presenter Elif Shafak took it up a notch Wednesday, arguing that the power of the personal story trumps all. "The problem with today's cultural ghettos is not lack of knowledge," said Shafak, the best-selling female author in Turkey and the daughter of a diplomat and a philosopher. "We know a lot about each other, or so we think. But knowledge that doesn't take us beyond ourselves makes us distant and disconnected." Fiction, said Shafak, takes us into new territories. "Identity politics divides us, fiction connects," she said. "One is interested in sweeping generalizations; the other, in nuances. One draws boundaries; the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water."

Here's Shafak's TED talk, released today: