Julian Assange was ‘no show’ at New York The Hope hackers Conference but gave interview talk in Oxford University at Ted Global conference as he had to cancel three public appearances in the United States, including one at the June conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors in Las Vegas, Nevada, because of “unreasonable” statements by U.S. officials in private that they “may not follow the rule of law” in dealing with him. But he did make a surprise appearance at the TED Global conference at Oxford University last week en par with blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman who reports on it
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/ . Chris Anderson, TED’s founder, interviews him onstage and talks through Wikileak’s mission, structure and history and was asking if it’s fair to say that Wikileaks has released more secret documents that the collective enterprise of journalism, Julian allows that it’s an embarrassment for journalists to have such a comparison made. His last interview with The Guardian http://www.feedset.com/2010/07/14/julian-assange-im-an-information-activist/
Assange as impresario of a new form of news.WikiLeaks has just five full-time staff and about 40 others who, he says, “very frequently do things”, backed by 800 occasional helpers and 10,000 supporters and donors – an amorphous, decentralised structure, which might become the model for many media organisations in the future, as what might be called “journalism factories” become both outmoded and unfinanceable. This is a delicate moment in the development of what Assange prefers to think of as a “movement”. “We have all the problems that a growing startup organisation has,” he says, “combined with an extreme adversarial environment and state spying.”
