There is an old question meant to open a door into the human character: If you found a $100 note on the sidewalk, would you keep it if you felt sure no one saw you, or would you try to track down its owner?

But that question is becoming superfluous, because in our hyper-fast information age, it’s more likely you’ll end up on YouTube through the growing presence of video — especially if you’re in an urban area where security cameras abound. Or perhaps, if you’re one of the 175 million Twitter users or one of the 550 million people on Facebook, you might be inclined to tell the world of your good luck. After all, what’s a bit of good luck if you have no one to share it with? Then you may well find the poor sod who dropped the cash knocking on your door.

That the private musings of kings and diplomats are also no longer concealed thanks to WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange is just the extreme version of what was already happening.

The debate underway is why Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is Time magazine’s man of the year for pushing personal information into the public realm, while Assange is a villain for taking the secrets of corporations, politicians, diplomats and the military and making them public.

Who served the greater good? Who is really bad?

That such a debate exists in the pages of the upscale Globe and Mail and in the high-school humour of Saturday Night Live shows that privacy is becoming a lost cause throughout the social spectrum.

WikiLeaks’ Twitter account has almost 583,000 followers. Its slogan is “we open government” and it claims to be “everywhere.” Facebook’s Zuckerberg has more than 2.2 million “likes.” Among his personal interests are “openness ... revolutions” and “information flow.”

They, and others like them, are building a matrix from which there is no escape, not even with a blue pill.

In December 2009, Facebook removed the privacy controls for its news feed, allowing more information about people’s activities to escape their grasp. Facebook backtracked in the face of criticism, but its solution — a complicated series of settings — ensures more information than people intended will get out.

Assange isn’t interested in backtracking. WikiLeaks is said to have 2,000 mirror sites operating. Others are copying the model. That model depends on someone supplying inside information to the Assanges of the world. Are there enough bitter subversives out there to sustain that model? You bet there are.

That means people, corporations and governments will seek ways to protect their information.

That’s the battleground for 2011 and beyond.

That Zuckerberg responds to public pressure, albeit grudgingly, is a positive sign; that Assange is unrepentant for publishing information that potentially stifles anti-terrorism initiatives and puts confidential sources in military zones at risk is disturbing.

There are more of both types out there and it looks like they can’t be stopped. Heck, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian and The London Times were part of WikiLeaks’ publication machinery, though their redacted versions were more responsible.

The pursuit of the “new” openness is relentless. Ultimately, it’s ethical centre will lie somewhere between Zuckerberg and Assange — which just means we can’t go back.

The year 2010 will be remembered as the year the doors of privacy blew open and never completely closed.

brian.macleod@sunmedia.ca