Suspended Circulation

While reading the Galison article about the rapidly increasing wealth of secret (governmental) information, I began to think back to discussions about the new importance- and power- of circulation, and the links between increased circulation and the growing library of classified, inaccessible information. It would seem that as circulation becomes easier the power of well-kept secrets grow stronger- partly because the general openness in other areas serves as a distraction, constructing a veneer of a "new age" of accessibility, and partly because as loose circulation makes what is being circulation shallower, the depth of secrets assumes increased importance. As transnational borders are loosened by increased communication technology (the internet), by withholding more information, nations can work to restabilize their particular singularities- culture may have become more easily transportable, but secrets, not so much. Secrets have always been nationally important (to the theoretical nation, that is, not to the general population) but they seem to only have grown in importance as they've grown in number.

To look at information as a new form of capital, it also appears that secrecy operates as a sort of class struggle, with those nations holding secret information as hoarding that information as private property, appropriating it with the intent of wielding it over those who don't have that information. And, as always, there are those who recognize the current state of such affairs and find displeasure in them (Paglen) and those who the commanding powers have lulled into an ignorance, or contentment, about certain operational procedures regarding how their nations operate. I guess what I'm wondering, then, is whether there will be a build-up of informational capital leading towards a revolution, of sorts, or whether antagonisms between those with information versus those without will ever even fully realize themselves in the consciousness of the have-nots, or whether perhaps there will be flashes of resistance that will never gain any real momentum.