In the shadow of the sticky Wiki

Matthew du Plessis: Information should be free. But it isn't. (That'll be R59.99, please.) Because even when it is free, someone ends up paying. In the case of the WikiLeaks infodump, the person that seems to be paying most is me.

I've been forking out what may to some observers seem like a wee bit too much in the way of wonga since wiki leaked. And just between you and me, I'm starting to suspect it might not have been worth it.

It's the network of analysts I employ to help me research my columns, you see. They're freelancers, and although their interests most certainly do overlap, each has his - or her - (or its) own speciality. Cyborg-human relations, transmolecular longevity therapies, the physical characteristics of chocolate milkshakes in a zero-gravity vacuum, neologistic reductions of hypothetical ad absurdum, and so on.

These are highly particular fields, and while I have little doubt that my ornithoptometric analyses of the most significant and challenging scientific issues of our time would be the poorer without their peculiar insights and recognitive patterning talents, it's also true that each of them bloody well knows it, and charges accordingly.

But I am not without my own economic savvy. I have been able to budget effectively, using only one or two stringers at a time according to the need and availability of their proficiencies, and how much money I have left over from my trip to the comic shop that week.

Thanks to that accursed Julian Assange, however, this week past has been something of a dog show.

Oh, yes of course, it starts off being so very exciting: when a steaming mountain of new data is dumped outside your front door, the first thing anyone wants to do is climb up onto the roof and take a swan-dive straight into the stuff, and dig and dig and dig through that info-goop in the deliriously vain hope that "this" time there's bound to be evidence, or a clue, or even just an effervescent but still distinctly followable whiff of a hint of X, Y, or Z.

But for those of us who have been at this game for a while, that would be a beginner's error.

The infonuggets of real interest will be found not in the datadump, but next to it. In its shadow, if you like. And probably slightly out of focus. And although the nous-space the WikiLeak information mountain occupies is considerable, the space it DOESN'T occupy is obviously a whole lot vaster. Quite probably infinite. Which means there's a fair amount of ground to cover.

So, while conventional analysts work on the WikiDump, I had to bring in ALL of my people at the same time, working overtime, to parse and sort through all the news that ISN'T leak-related.

No comics this week, then.

We look in the negative nous-space because to the shrewd committee of illuminated personages governing the course of human civilisation - or their institutionalised equivalents - this Wiki'd moment of near-complete international distraction is the perfect time to let slip into the public sphere knowledge that would otherwise freak people the hell out.

If it's there - and it might not be, after all, it'll be some small thing, buried underneath something else. Designed to begin the process of frog-boiling humanity into a new paradigm, degree by imperceptible degree.

And I think we've found it.

Actually, scratch that, it's MY team so I found it.

It doesn't come from the world of xenobiology. That Nasa announcement last night? With all the speculation beforehand about life being found on one of Saturn's moons? Classic misdirection. I'm not saying the world already has ample proof of the existence of alien life forms, but I'm also not saying we don't already have trade agreements in place with the curiously ankled frog-people of Vega Prime's moon.

That particular announcement was nothing more than veiled tease to hook more funding for the ISS's zero-G ping-pong championship next year.

It's also not the announcement by a woman in Spain that, in line with international property law, she now owns the Sun. Or her announcement the next day that she didn't, really, after being hit with a class action lawsuit from millions of sunburn victims.

No, I want to tell you what it REALLY is. I really do want to tell you. Only, I have these freelancers bashing down my door, you see. So if you REALLY want to know (you do, you seriously do) then drop me a line and we'll talk about a price. No chancers please. And no bids from any countries or individuals without their own space programme. Thanks.