Tarankanische (The Terrible Cockroach) original book cover, 1925
Sometime ago, when I gave a talk at the Sri Lanka Rationnalists’ Association, a member of my audience asked if parents should be banned from reading fairy tales to their children. His argued that children should be raised on reality and not fantasy. I was talking about science fiction and their social relevance, and I answered: there is absolutely no harm in fairy tales as they nurture in our young minds those vital qualities of imagination and sense of wonder. I quoted C S Lewis as saying that the only people really against escapism were…jailers!
These days, not all children’s stories are fairy tales and some of them actually carry very down-to-earth messages either overtly or covertly. Members of that largest club in the world – Parenthood – keep discovering new depths and insights in some children’s stories.
On 30 January, as people power struggles were unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt, I wrote a blog post titled Wanted: More courageous little ‘Mack’s to unsettle Yertle Kings of our times!. I related how, while following the developments on the web, I have been re-reading my Dr Seuss. In particular, the delightfully inspiring tale of Yertle the Turtle King. To me, that is the perfect example of People Power in action — cleverly disguised as children’s verse!
Turns out another parent on the opposite side of the planet had a similar insight, but from an even older children’s story written in Russia! Philip Shishkin has shared his experience in the latest issue of Newsweek.
Tarankanische, or ‘The Terrible Cockroach’ (also translated as ‘The Giant Cockroach’) is a children’s story written by the Russian author Kornei Chukovsky (1882-1969). The first edition, with illustrations by Sergeii Chekhonin, was published in (then) Leningrad 1925.
I was raised on translated Russian children’s stories (the only books of that genre we could access in the closed-economy, socialist misadventures of Sri Lanka during the early 1970s). Whatever economic realities that thrust those books on my childhood, many of them were very fine stories, always well illustrated. But I had somehow missed out on this one — so I quickly did some web searching for this story. And what a fantastic fable it is!
Tarankanische tells the nonsense tale of a threatening cockroach who is so fierce that he terrifies all the animals who are out to enjoy a picnic. Even the mighty elephants are helpless in his presence. The cockroach bullies and scares animals much larger than itself, and demands they surrender their cubs so he can eat them. He is seen as “a terrible giant: the red-haired, big-whiskered cockroach.”
Tarankanische, or The Terrible Cockroach, Sergeii Chekhonin, illustrator, 1925The little tyrant rules the whole jungle on a mix of fear, submission and misery. A laughing kangaroo points out that it’s no giant, but merely a cockroach. The hippos tell him to shut up: “You’ll make things worse for us”. Then, one day, Nature finally restores balance (as it always does): a sparrow comes along and gobbles up the Terrible Cockroach.
In his essay titled Watching the Mighty Cockroach Fall, Philip Shishkin writes: “It is hard not to read the poem as an allegory for the rise and fall of a dictatorship. Despots tend to appear invincible while they rule, and then laughably weak when they fall. Once their subjects call them out on their farce, dictators look ridiculous. Often, they react by killing and jailing people, which buys them more time in power (Iran, Belarus, and Uzbekistan come to mind). But just as often, when faced with a truly popular challenge, dictators shrink to the size of their inner cockroaches.”
Shishkin then raises an interesting question: Did Kornei Chukovsky have Joseph Stalin in mind when he wrote it? Was Stalin prominent enough when the story was first published in 1925? To find out, read the full essay.
According to his mini-bio on IMDB, Chukovsky was a praised Russian translator of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and other English and American authors. His writings for children are regarded as classics of the form. His best-known poems for children are “Krokodil”, “Moydodyr”, “Tarakanische”, and “Doctor Aybolit” (Doctor Ouch).
As a journalist, I was trained to look for what’s New, True and Interesting (‘NTI Test’). Early on, I went beyond just reporting events, and probed the underlying causes and processes. With experience, I can now offer my audiences something more: perspective and seasoned opinion. These are needed today more than ever as we wade through massive volumes of information, trying to make sense of it all.
I’ve been privileged to chronicle and comment on the closing decade of the 20th Century and the opening one of the 21st – years of unprecedented change, and considerable turmoil, in my country (Sri Lanka), region (Asia) and the world. In my chosen areas of science, technology and sustainable development, changes have happened at a dazzling and often bewildering speed.
As a science writer and development film maker, I work with researchers, activists and officials across Asia who struggle to balance ecological concerns with economic development imperatives. I call myself a ‘critical cheer-leader’ of their efforts. Through TVE Asia Pacific, SciDev.Net and my other affiliations, I seek to enhance the public understanding of complex issues and choices required in pursuing sustainable development.
I sometimes feel a strange kinship with the ancient Greeks, who first asked some fundamental questions about the universe. They didn’t always get the answers right, and neither do I. But it is very important that we question and critique progress – I do so with an open mind, enthusiasm and optimism. On some occasions, this involves asking uncomfortable questions that irk those in positions of power and authority. In that sense, I sometimes play the role of that little boy who told the Emperor had no clothes on. (Does anyone know what happened to the boy after that?).
This is the basic premise for a new weekly newspaper column I am writing from this month in the Sinhala weekend newspaper Ravaya. A few weeks ago, the executive editor of Ravaya invited me to write a regular column, which I accepted after some hesitation. My hesitation was not about them; it was about my own ability to express myself in Sinhala, a language I studied more than a quarter century ago, but have not worked in for over 20 years. But I’ve decided to take it on as a challenge, and see how far I can go and how well I can write on topics and issues that are close to my heart: science, technology, environment and development. The first column has just appeared in the Ravaya issue for 6 Feb 2011. Ravaya: Always Open for Debate
I have been a regular reader of Ravaya in all its 25 years of publication. As I wrote in a book review last year: “It is an extraordinary publication that has, for nearly a quarter of a century, provided a platform for vibrant public discussion and debate on social and political issues. It does so while staying aloof of political party loyalties and tribal divisions. While it cannot compete directly (for circulation) with newspapers published by the state or press barons, this sober and serious broadsheet commands sufficient influence among a loyal and discerning readership.”
Published by a company owned by journalists themselves, Ravaya is almost unique among Lankan newspapers for another reason: its columnists and other contributors are allowed to take positions that are radically different from those of its formidable editor, Victor Ivan. I’m not sure how soon I will get to test this, but such pluralism is very rare in today’s mainstream media in Sri Lanka.
January 2011 has been an eventful month for democratic reform in the Middle East. As People Power successfully toppled the deeply entrenched dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia, and the ordinary Egyptians intensified their pressure on own 30-year-long regime of Hosni Mubarak, commentators around the world have been trying to make sense of the rapidly unfolding developments. One of them, David Kravets, writing in Wired linked to a blog post of mine that talked about the experience of one of the earliest successful demonstrations of people power — in the Philippines, when they toppled a long-misruling dictator in 1986.
Amidst all this, and while following the developments on the web, I have been re-reading my Dr Seuss. In particular, the delightfully inspiring tale of Yertle the Turtle King. To me, that is the perfect example of People Power in action — cleverly disguised as children’s verse!
The story was first published in April 1958, in a picture book collection by Theodor Geisel, published under his more commonly-known pseudonym, Dr. Seuss. In 2001, Publishers Weekly listed it at No 125 on a list of the best-selling children’s books of all time.
For those poor Seuss-deprived readers, here’s a helpful summary I have adapted from Wikipedia:
The story is about Yertle the Turtle, the king of the pond in the far-away island of Sala-ma-Sond. Unsatisfied with the stone that serves as his throne, he commands the other turtles to stack themselves beneath him so that he can see further and expand his kingdom (he considers himself the master of all he can see). However, the stacked turtles are in pain. Mack, a very ordinary little turtle at the very bottom of the pile, asks Yertle for a respite, but Yertle just tells him to shut up. Dissent is suppressed.
King Yertle is still not happy: he wants ‘to expand his kingdom’. So he commands more and more turtles to add to his throne. Mack again asks for a respite because the increased weight is now causing extreme pain to the turtles at the bottom. Again Yertle yells at Mack to shut up. At this point, little Mack decides he has had enough and decides to do something to vent his anger and frustration: he just burps. That simple action shakes up the entire stack of turtles, and the mighty king comes crashing down into the pond — and all turtles are freed at last!
Years ago, when I first read the story to my then very young daughter, I could immediately see strong parallels between the vain, merciless Yertle the turtle king and the equally egotistic megalomaniacs in the world of human politics and governance. I would later learn that Dr Seuss meant Yertle to be Adolf Hitler: the turtle’s rule of the pond and takeover of the surrounding areas signified Hitler’s regime in Germany and invasion of surrounding Europe.
The ordinary but courageous Mack epitomises long-suffering Everyman and Everywoman in all countries where autocratic or dictatorial regimes rule, piling ever more burdens on their people. Like the turtles in the stack, the people can go on for years taking a great deal of suffering and sacrifice while the despots plunder and make merry. But there comes a day when a ‘Mack’ says enough is enough…and emits a humble ‘burp’ that shakes up everyone.
As Dr Seuss wrote (and this is my favourite part!):
But, as Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand
And started to order and give the command,
That plain little turtle below in the stack,
That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack,
Decided he’d taken enough. And he had.
And that plain little lad got a bit mad.
And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing.
He burped!
And his burp shook the throne of the king!
And Yertle the Turtle, the king of the trees,
The king of the air and the birds and the bees,
The king of a house and a cow and a mule…
Well, that was the end of the Turtle King’s rule!
For Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-Sond,
Fell off his high throne and fell Plunk! in the pond!
And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.
And the turtles, of course… all the turtles are free
As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.
I don’t mean to oversimplify or belittle the enormous courage and resolve it takes for ordinary people to take on a brutal regime, but as pop-culture metaphors go, it’s hard to find a better one than Mack and his defiant burp. That little burp by a tiny turtle brought a vain king down, and its real-world equivalent is called people power: when long-oppressed ordinary people take to the streets to protest against the accumulated excesses of their rulers, demanding reform or regime change.
Not all such ‘burps’ bring all ‘Yertles’ down in the real world. The mighty Soviet Union crumbled in the late 1980s thanks to the courage and persistence of ordinary people who stood up and stepped out. It also worked twice in the Philippines: first against an outright dictator (Marcos) in 1986, and then against a renegade elected president (Estrada) in 2001. A variation of it happened in Nepal against the brutal King Gyanendra, who was dumped into the dustbin of history with the entire monarchy in 2006. Each case had its own history, dynamics and outcomes but shared the common feat of people power.
Sounds familiar? That's because it's all too common!But elsewhere, as in Tiananmen Square of China (1989) Burma (2007) and Thailand (2010), people power failed to change regimes and led to much violence and bloodshed. What particular combination of social, political and technological factors make people power work is currently the subject of intense study and debate among scholars, diplomats and activists.
But there’s no doubt that recent history has been shaped and made by Macks who broke the silence and, figuratively speaking, burped. Some such burps were heard around the world, and some Macks went on to lead prolonged revolutions that ended with them becoming rulers themselves: Lech Walesa, Cory Aquino and Valclav Havel come to mind.
For every ‘Mack’ who succeeds, though, there are many who go unsung —or much worse. We still have no idea what happened to that much photographed and celebrated ‘Tank Man’ who stood up against the Red Army’s tanks on Tiananman Square one fateful day in June 1989. We don’t even know his name, but his defiance against such enormous odds still inspires assorted Macks all over the world.
For sure, our world is a tiny bit larger — and more complex — than that muddy pond in far away Sala-ma-Sond. And we have an abundance of Yertles, of various colours and hues, riding literally on the backs of their fellow people.
At least some of these tyrants must be following the recent developments in Tunisia and Egypt with growing anxiety. We can only hope that there will be a steady stream of courageous little ‘Macks’ in all such countries who will finally speak up and say: ‘Oi, Enough is enough!’
And then…BURP!
PS: Interesting footnote: Dr Seuss was the first to use the word “burp” in print. That apparently was cause for some concern before publication. According to him, the publishers at Random House, including the president, had to meet to decide whether or not they could use “burp” because “nobody had ever burped before on the pages of a children’s book”.
Time is ticking away...but crises also mean opportunities
I like to think and speak in metaphors, especially visual metaphors. Sometimes I coin or design new ones. This illustration is the latest example.
Individual elements in this came from very different sources (thanks to them all). I just mixed them together to make two points during a talk I just gave at the Colombo University.
We live in a crisis-ridden world where we have to cope with multiple emergencies unfolding at the same time, impacting us on different fronts. This illustration captures three of them: crisis in biodiversity, man-made climate change, and the new reality of living in a rapidly WikiLeakable world — what I called the Global Glass House.
We don’t get to choose the timing, severity or duration of any challenge. But we do have some choice over how we respond: we can despair and grumble (blaming the Gods or karma if we believe in those); we can become really alarmist (a la Chicken Little); or we can be measured and smart in how we deal with the seemingly overwhelming situations.
Speaking at the Leaders in Environmental Advocacy Forum (LEAF) on Preserving the Past, Securing the Future on 22 January 2011 at the University of Colombo, I advocated this last option. I also pulled together a number of ideas mentioned on this blog over the past four years.
LEAF was a two-day summit held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, hosted by members of the Elon University’s Periclean Scholar Class of 2011, in partnership with the University of Colombo, the United States Embassy in Colombo, the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka and Rainforest Rescue International.
In fact, some challenges of living on a warming planet are comparable to coping with a WikiLeakable world: both demand quick adaptation to a new reality. In both cases, governments and society have to change mindset and practices on the go — business as usual is no longer an option. Denialism, or demonising the messenger, won’t take us forward. We need more measured, sometimes even pragmatic responses.
In that process, all-or-nothing is not a viable approach. Waiting for full knowledge and understanding is not feasible either. As I once described it, responding to the planet’s climate and other ecological crisis with partial scientific understanding is akin to many pages of our planet’s ‘operations manual’ being still completely blank — and yet we have to manage the planet to the best of our knowledge, intuition and common sense.
Many of the same principles apply to living in the modern networked info society, where no secrets can be kept that way for too long. The sooner we come to terms with this new reality and adapt, the better.
I’m delighted to see others are addressing these parallels. In my talk, I mentioned a recent essay titled Could climate science become open source? by Brendan Barrett and Sulayman K. Sowe, published earlier this month on the UN University’s Our World 2.0 website.
In their perceptive piece, the authors ask whether climate science would benefit by being more firmly grounded in the principles of openness, perhaps along the lines of the free and open source software communities and open content movements. “The concept of openness behind free and open source software describes a mode of creative knowledge production and sharing in which individuals and communities freely generate and adapt or remix resources (content or software) without licensing restrictions.”
They add: “Proposing a move to a new model of climate science in no way suggests that climate change is not a real and present threat or that we cannot rely on the integrity of our contemporary climate science institutions and scientists. Rather, the argument here is that learning from the way free and open source software projects and communities work may be an important way forward in engendering more effective global, national and local responses to climate change.”
I have always worn multiple ‘hats’, and dabbled in multiple pursuits rather than follow narrow paths of enquiry. I see myself continuing to oscillate between the ‘geeks’ and greens, and where possible, bridging their worlds. It’s really encouraging to see some others straddling the two spheres.
Skip Williamson's Facebook profile photoWow, isn’t the Facebook a great place to connect people, ideas and creativity? I never thought much about it, but maybe I ought to spend more time there…
Yesterday, I published a semi-serious essay called WikiLeaks, Swiss Banks and Alien invasions, which was about an obscure short story by Arthur C Clarke describing an unlikely alien invasion of the Earth. For once, the invaders used brain and cunning rather than fire power, and against this onslaught, our planet’s rulers had no defence…
I mentioned how PLAYBOY Magazine had used that story as the basis for a psychedelic comic strip illustrated by the American underground cartoonist Skip Williamson. At the time of writing, I had not been able to locate the comic strip that was published in their issue of May 1972. I wondered: “…it’s either behind a pay-wall, or lies somewhere with little or no indexing by search engines.”
Turns out to be the latter. In less than 24 hours, there was a response from Skip Williamson himself saying the artwork is on his Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/skip.williamson.
Many thanks to Skip Williamson for posting the link…and while at it, for all his brilliantly cheeky and subversive creations over the years! I hope he doesn’t mind my reproducing the comic strip (all of 2 pages) below:
When the Twerms Came - Comic Strip - Page 1 of 2When the Twerms Came - Comic Strip page 2 of 2
Tsunami survivors look at an lbum of family photos in Telwatte, Sri Lanka - Photo by Shahidul Alam
Today marks the 6th anniversary of the Boxing Day Tsunami of December 2004. The occasion is being marked solemnly in many locations hit by the waves all along the Indian Ocean rim countries.
Among them is Peraliya, close to Telwatte, where the worst train crash in railroad history occurred that day — when an overcrowded passenger train was destroyed on a coastal railway in Sri Lanka by the tsunami. The government-owned Sri Lanka Railways will never be able to live down their day of infamy when a packed train headed to disaster with no warning… They have the gumption — and insensitivity — to operate a memorial train today along the same path that led more than 2,000 passengers to a watery grave six years ago.
After six years, most survivors have moved on and rebuilt their shattered lives. Memories are also beginning to fade a bit, but for those directly affected, they will remember 26 December 2004 for the rest of their lives. And we who shared their tragedy and misery will keep reliving the memories through photographs, videos and the growing body of creative writing that the region-wide disaster inspired.
Photographs stand out as possibly the most enduring memory aids of a disaster. As disaster survivors sift through what is left of their homes, family photo albums are among the most cherished possessions they seek to recover. Why are snapshots of frozen moments so powerfully evocative to individuals, communities and the world?
Titled Capturing Nature’s Fury, the chapter drew on Shahidul’s experiences not only with the tsunami, which he covered in Sri Lanka, but also the earthquakes in Bam, Iran (December 2003) and Kashmir (October 2005), and cyclones and floods in his native Bangladesh.
Shahidul Alam. Photo: Rahnuma Ahmed/Drik/Majority WorldDescribing the circumstances of the above photo, Shahidul wrote: “In the ruins of Telwatte, where the fateful train disaster had taken place, I came across a family that had gathered in the wreckage of their home. I wanted to ask them their stories, find out what they had seen, but stopped when I saw them pick up the family album. They sat amidst the rubble and laughed as they turned page after page.”
Zooming out, he further reflected:
“I had seen it before. As people rummaged through the ruins of their homes, the first thing they searched for was photographs. Years earlier at a disaster closer to home, I had photographed a group of children amidst the floods of 1988. The children insisted on being photographed. As I pressed the shutter, I realised that the boy in the middle was blind. He would never see the photograph he was proudly posing for. Why was it so important for the blind boy to be photographed?
“Though my entry into photography had been through a happy accident, my choice of becoming a photographer had been a very conscious one. Having felt the power of the image I recognised its ability to move people. The immediacy of an iconic image, its ability to engage with the viewer, its intimacy, the universality of its language, means it is at once a language of the masses, but also the key that can open doors.
“For both the gatekeepers and the public, the image has a visceral quality that is both raw and delicate. It can move people to laughter and to tears and can touch people at many levels. The iconic image lingers, long after the moment has gone. We are the witnesses of our times and the historians of our ages. We are the collective memories of our communities.
Anand Patwardhan is one of India’s best known and most outspoken documentary film makers. He has been making political documentaries for over three decades, pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. He epitomises the activist film maker and has inspired a generation of socially sensitive film makers.
In the world’s largest democracy that is India, and in a country with a vibrant and diverse media that is considered to be among the most free in the developing world, Anand has constantly run into problems getting his films seen on broadcast television. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Anand, who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court.
As his website notes, several of his films have also incurred the wrath of right wing fundamanentalists both in India and abroad. “In keeping with the uneven nature of India’s democratic institutions and its sharply divided polity, bouquets have been accompanied by brickbats.”
I came across a good interview with Anand Patwardhan in the Indian current affairs magazine Frontline, issue for 4 – 17 December 2010. Here are two questions concerning the censorship problems he has often faced:
Ram Ke Naam (In the Name of God), 1991Q: You have had problems getting clearance from the Central Board of Film Certification for almost all your films, and then later they were not allowed to be screened on Doordarshan. Your films are also not screened on private channels. How do you see this constant struggle with these forms of censorship?
A: Right from the first film, I faced censorship in some form or the other. Even the Janata Party after it came to power refused to screen Waves of Revolution though it was against the Emergency. L.K. Advani was the Information and Broadcasting Minister then. I had added an epilogue which said that the janata raj [people’s rule] that the film spoke about was not the same as [that of] the Janata Party now in power. I also drew attention to the political prisoners still being held in jail. Finally, after media pressure built up, the film was screened on Doordarshan.
Prisoners of Conscience also got into trouble with the censor board, and it took a letter from Satyajit Ray to the government saying that they must not stop a film like this to get the required clearance.
Ram Ke Naam followed the rath yatra of Advani and the violence in Ayodhya on October 30, 1990, when the Babri Mosque was attacked for the first time. It was meant to be a warning to the nation about the rise of Hindutva fundamentalism. I had trouble with the censors initially, but it finally got through in 1992 and then I had trouble with Doordarshan, which refused to show it. Finally, after the film won a national award for Best Investigative Documentary, I was able to go to court and argue that the government cannot give me a national award and yet say that I cannot show the film on Doordarshan, which it had been doing systematically. In fact, whenever any film of mine won a national award, I used it to go to court. I argued that not showing such a film on national TV was a denial of my right to freedom of expression and of the viewers’ right to information.
On these grounds I have won seven cases till now – five in the High Courts and two in the Supreme Court after the government went in appeal. Ram Ke Naam was finally shown on Doordarshan in 1997. The judge ordered that the film should be telecast at prime time.
Stills from Anand Patwardhan (courtesy his website) Q: Why have you not approached private channels to screen your films?
A: The private media, including television, are not about giving people information. They are run by corporates more interested in providing entertainment. Their news and analysis are restricted to five and 10 second [sound] bites. Their clear mandate is commercial. They will ask, “Where are the advertisers who will endorse your product? Who is going to give the money to show this? Are we going to waste one and a half hours of TV time on issues?”
I have also discovered that even in the private domain there is political censorship. A few days before the Allahabad High Court verdict on [the] Ayodhya [title suit] was due, a private channel approached me to screen Ram Ke Naam. They paid me for three broadcasts but stopped after showing the film just once despite extremely positive feedback from viewers. On inquiring, I was told that the channel was pressured not to show the film by both the Information and Broadcasting Ministry and the TV Broadcasters’ Association. Anyone who watches Ram Ke Naam will realise that this censorship was done to protect the interests of unscrupulous politicians who had used the emotive appeal of Ram for financial and political gain.
The situation today is such that you cannot pinpoint where the censorship is coming from. During the Emergency you at least knew who the enemy was. But now what do you do when every wing of society – whether it’s the legal system, and so on – is complicit in a blanket suppression of facts.
What do you think of higher education in Sri Lanka, a young documentary film maker asked me a few weeks ago.
That would be a good idea, I replied. I wasn’t trying to be too cynical, but that’s the stark reality.
Sri Lanka’s 20 million population is served by 15 public universities. Between them, these had a total of 65,588 students (not counting those enrolled with the Open University) and 4,738 faculty members in 2009.
None of these universities come anywhere near the top 1,000 (or even top 2,000) of the world’s universities as independently ranked using measurable criteria. Some say we have universities in name only, which of course those inside the system protest and deny vehemently.
University World News, an online global higher education publication focusing on international higher education news and analysis, recently asked me for a comment article on the crisis in Sri Lanka’s higher education sector. When I said I was a complete outsider to the system, they replied that’s precisely why they wanted my view.
So I wrote a 1,100 words which has just been published. My original title was ‘Squabbling while our future burns’ but some editors like to understate (their prerogative). I’m glad the rest of my text has largely survived their considerate editing.
Here are the opening paras:
“Sri Lanka’s university system is overburdened, outdated, and badly in need of reform. But politicians, academics and students just can’t agree on how to do it. So they fight.
“The recent wave of student protests have focused on one element of a wider package of proposed reforms: inviting private universities into a country where publically -funded universities currently dominate.
“In Sri Lanka’s heavily polarised political culture, the much-needed reforms have become the latest source of bickering. Yes, we need public discussion and debate to make the best policy choices. But what progress can be achieved when rhetoric replaces reason?
“As a concerned citizen and anxious parent, I call this reckless squabbling while our children’s future burns…”
The essay ends with the brief author bio, part of which reads: “Nalaka Gunawardene sometimes calls himself a ‘higher education refugee'”. My regular readers know how and why.
“In the struggle for freedom of information, technology — not politics — will be the ultimate decider.”
These words, by Sir Arthur C Clarke, have been cited in recent days and weeks in many debates surrounding WikiLeaks, secrecy and the public’s right to know.
I invoke these words, and many related reflections by the late author and futurist, in a 2,250-word essay I have just written. Titled Living in the Global Glass House, it is presented in the form of an Open Letter to Sir Arthur C Clarke. It has just been published by Groundviews.org
This is my own attempt to make sense of the international controversy – and confusion – surrounding WikiLeaks. Taking off from the current concerns, I also look at what it means for individuals, corporations and governments to live in the Age of Transparency that has resulted from the Information Society we’ve been building for years.
Sir Arthur foresaw these developments year or decades ago, and wrote perceptively and sometimes in cautionary terms about how we can cope with these developments. As a research assistant and occasional co-author to Sir Arthur from 1987 to 2008, I had the rare privilege of sharing his views firsthand. In this essay, I distill some of the best and most timely for wider dissemination. The above Wordle graphic illustrates the keywords in my essay.
The essay was also prompted by recent experiences. Here’s that story behind the story:
By happy coincidence, I arrived in London on 28 November 2010, the very day the WikiLeaks Cablegate erupted all over the web, beginning to spill out what would eventually be over 250,000 secret international ‘cables’ within the US diplomatic corps.
The Guardian UK that day published an interactive map-based visualization of the leaks. By moving the mouse over the map, readers can find key stories and a selection of original documents by country, subject or people
During the week I spent in London, I experienced not only uncharacteristically early and intense snow storms, but a mounting international storm on the web over the leaked cables. WikiLeaks’ co-founder and chief editor Julian Assange was also somewhere in the UK, playing cat and mouse at the time with the Swedish police and Interpol. (He later turned himself in to the British authorities.)
Sir Arthur Clarke: The legacy continues...On December 1, the British Interplanetary Society invited me to join their annual Christmas get-together where they were remembering their founder member and past chairman Arthur C Clarke. They talked mostly about the man’s contribution to space exploration, but listening to those fond memories against the wider backdrop of WikiLeaks very likely inspired me to write this essay.
Soon after I returned to Colombo, Transparency International Sri Lanka asked me to speak at a workshop on the right to information they had organised for journalists. Given my reputation as a geek-watcher and commentator on the Information Society, they asked to talk about what WikiLeaks means for investigative journalism. Two days later, the Ravaya newspaper did a lengthy interview with me on the same topic which they have just published in their issue for 19 December 2010.
All these elements and experiences combined in writing this essay. Being confined to home by a nasty cold and cough also helped! In fact, on 16 December when Sir Arthur’s 93rd Birth Anniversary was marked, I was too weak to even step out of the house to visit his gravesite. In the end, I finished writing this Open Letter to him on the evening of that day.
My daughter Dhara and I would normally have taken flowers to Sir Arthur’s grave on his birth anniversary. This year, instead, I offer him 2,250 words in his memory. The fine writer would surely appreciate this tribute from a small-time wordsmith.
Poddala Jayantha's mother and father receiving award from Kanak Mani dixit (extreme R)
Two persons stood out among the several hundred people gathered at Sri Lanka National Integrity Awards ceremony on December 9 evening in Colombo. Dressed in off-white, the elderly couple looked dignified yet slightly bewildered by the pace of events at Colombo’s top conventions venue.
But when their moment arrived, the parents of investigative journalist Poddala Jayantha rose to the occasion: they accepted the Global Integrity Award presented to him by the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI).
Jayantha could not turn up in person because his is under threat and fled Sri Lanka for safety. In June 2009, he was abducted by unidentified persons and assaulted. The attack, one among many on journalists in Sri Lanka, left him permanently disabled in his legs. That’s the high price he had to pay for systematically exposing corruption and irregularities in government and corporate sector in Sri Lanka.
TI, which created this award to recognise the courage and determination of individuals and organisations fighting corruption around the world, commended Jayantha for his “dedication to exposing injustice in Sri Lanka”.
Poddala Jayantha“I am happy that I could fight against corruption and campaign for press freedom while working for the state media,” he told BBC Sinhala after the awards announcement. “But yes I had to leave the country as a result.”
I’ve long admired Poddala’s courage and meticulous research, and have been amazed that he managed to do so much while working in a state-owned media establishment like Lake House, where he was employed after leaving the independent Ravaya newspaper. Of course he was the exception to the rule, but what a refreshing exception that was — reminding us that even amidst all those sacred cows that state media journalists must tiptoe around, they can still serve the public interest if they want to…
Of course, there were also stories that he never got to write. In November 2008, I wrote about one such example in an essay commenting on the Lankan media’s shameful conduct in relation to our own Ponzi scheme and local Madoff called Sakvithi.
Open Minds! 
