Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief who is currently under political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, was able to attend The Nantucket Project as a hologram.
Assange, who has been in the state of asylum for the previous two years, has been able to extend his presence in conferences around the world without stepping out of the Ecuadorean Embassy. Communications programs such as Skype have allowed Assange to attend conferences and concerts, and reporters have been able to interact with Assange in press briefings.
However, Assange's presence in The Nantucket Project is the first time that he attended a conference in full hologram.
The Nantucket Project brought together the intellectual elite of the Northeastern set, including Secretary of State John Kerry, poet Billy Collins, ex-Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers and journalist Eugene Jarecki.
Jarecki was able to interview the hologram of Assange, wherein Assange spoke about the importance of information access and the risks of censorship, especially in the digital world. He also discussed his belief that he and WikiLeaks will someday be vindicated legally, all the while insisting that he is not a martyr or a vigilante.
"In the digital world we can delete history very easily. The notion of being able to disappear history entered into Orwell's writing. He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future," he said.
Assange also criticized the actions of the United States government to turn him into a "Bin Laden-type character," as well as Google's supposed role as a "revolving-door" partner of the NSA.
Assange concluded the interview by explaining why he has chosen to do what he has been doing.
"My conclusion is that the best way to go about changing things is simply to act. At its essence, when civilization is working well, it commits us to not do dumb things again. To do that, we have to have the ability to learn from each other, and learn from the past, how our institutions actually behave, their internal dialogue. Ideas can only be as good as their inputs."
Assange, however, may have been relieved that he was not physically present at the conference, as Google chairman Eric Schmidt was also in attendance.
Assange and Schmidt have recently been sending shots at each other in the press, as the two aims to increase publicity on their books How Google Works by Schmidt and When Google Met WikiLeaks by Assange, which details a secret meeting involving the two high-profile individuals that was held in 2011.
Last week, Assange sent accusations at Google that they are the "privatized NSA," which prompted Schmidt to respond by saying that Assange is "paranoid."
Assange's appearance through his hologram closed out The Nantucket Project for this year.
