Secrets, says Hubertus Bigend, are the root of cool.
This is in Spook Country, William Gibson's 2007 novel. Bigend also refers to a time "preubiquitous mass media." Considering that characterization, it's true. In our socially connected, phone-laden, wireless world, secrets may have acquired the scarcity and darkness required to define 'cool'.
Now, secrets are a commodity. Post Secrets. Wikileaks. Subtweeting. Everything out there. Rate my professor. Look at my porn. Hear my angst. Emulate my government.
To hide secrets now, we're back to radio operator techniques. Illusionists. Look over there. Now here. Listen to the static, to the steady roll of open-transparent-tell-all-datastream. Somewhere, inside a microscopic cell heart, is a kernel of a secret. It's lost in the river of all-ness.
In Agatha Christie novels, astute readers learned to look for the negative space, for the edges that didn't fit because they were fuzzy or glossed over. The absence of information often revealed the direction of truth.
Sometimes that works now too.
Who wants to keep secrets? Openness is our greatest value in the internet world. It's what the libertarians fear, it's why they clutch their guns tighter. Learning, understanding spreads... does democracy too? Or just insatiably conquer lust fuelled by a new ability to manipulate more at once?
Gibson thoughts from a hot bath.
