About WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency:

Micah L. Sifry, "a leading participant in and observer of how the Internet is changing politics and society," (Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation) brings us a new book on what WikiLeaks means for the future—and present—of governmental and corporate transparency.

In the last five years, thanks to networked technology, activism has gotten much more social, and data has gotten a lot more interactive. The result is a transformed environment where governments, corporations, and other powerful institutions have to accept that vital information is going to flow into the public, like it or not.

Welcome to the Age of Transparency. In his new book, Sifry sees WikiLeaks as a symptom of this—an indicator of an ongoing generational and philosophical struggle between older, closed systems, and the new open culture of the Internet. "What is new," he writes, "is our ability to connect, individually and together, with greater ease than at any time in human history. As a result, information is flowing more freely into the public arena, powered by seemingly unstoppable networks of people all over the world cooperating to share vital data and prevent its suppression."

About the author:

As the co-founder and executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum (where Julian Assange has spoken twice), editor of its award-winning techPresident.com blog, and a senior technology adviser to the Sunlight Foundation, Micah L. Sifry is perfectly situated for this analysis, the first book length discussion of WikiLeaks to appear in print. A former editor and writer at The Nationv Magazine, he is the author of one book (Spoiling for a Fight, 2002), co-author of another (Is that a Politician in Your Pocket?, 2004) and co-editor of two anthologies (The Iraq War Reader, 2003, and The Gulf War Reader, 1991). He is also a member of the board of Consumers Union. His personal blog is at micah.sifry.com. Follow him on Twitter @mlsif.