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Simon Willison’s Weblog

My ability to decide how I feel about Wikileaks’ activities is totally annihilated by my ongoing realization that it cannot possibly be real. It’s a plot device in a near-future thriller novel. I mean, seriously, semi-stateless man with an unusual appearance uses an army of anonymous allies to expose governments’ secrets, and posts an insurance file in public with some kind of deadman switch in case he’s taken out by his enemies? That shit does not happen in real life. Julian Assange is a Neal Stephenson character who’s escaped in to the real world.

— Tomorrowful on MetaFilter

Posted 1st August 2010 at 12:30 am

Tagged , , ,

30 comments

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    Torgeir Lebesbye - 1st August 2010 13:44 - #

  2. You're right, it is a near-future Neal Stephenson novel... from the 90s. This is the future now.

    That said, Jake Applebaum is perhaps the least believable character Neal Stephenson's ever written.

    Neil Kandalgaonkar - 2nd August 2010 00:09 - #

  3. I was always more partial to John Lè Carre and Graham Greene. The WikiLeaks stuff is definitely more like Stephenson but with a little of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum mixed in.

    Huxley - 5th August 2010 19:28 - #

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