Day of info

The juxtaposition of headlines today remembering Pearl Harbor with the London arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange sparked a thought: what if there were such a thing as WikiLeaks back in 1941?

Or Sarajevo in 1914?

Or New York in 2001?

Or the sub prime crisis in 2007?

Or the Madoff scheme in 2008?

Events that seem to come out of the blue, and change history, seldom do.  Hindsight and history prove otherwise. There's usually a long paper trail of warnings and analysis that would have positioned  such events as inevitable.  At the same time, broader knowledge of the inner workings of international relations may have helped our race smooth out some of the bumps of the 20th Century, such as the estimated 60 million casualties suffered in World War II.

Considering such a possibility at the very least reminds us of the power of information -- whether it be gleanings from data bases or the informal banter of social media -- to fuel our own imagination. Business leaders and world leaders can look deeper into the thoughts and actions of their respective marketplaces than ever before.

It may be useful to recognize the WikiLeaks phenomenon as neither a good thing or a bad thing. It is a fact.