When we look back on 2010 there's going to be plenty to talk about. But one thing rises above everything else in terms of global importance: WikiLeaks. The rape charges that its founder Julian Assange is now facing have diverted some of the coverage, but it's important not to lose sight of how significant the real story of this bombardment of previously 'confidential' information is ? as Naomi Klein tweeted last week, supporting WikiLeaks doesn't mean you support rape or anything else to do with those charges, it's about supporting freedom of information and freedom of speech.

The birth and ascent of WikiLeaks and its methods and goals has much to do with the acceleration of information and indeed the acceleration of many things in the world, from travel to modes of communication to shortening news cycles to the churn-over in pop culture. Practically every fact, figure, image, published work, song, film and theory is at our finger tips. No niggling missing piece of information goes unGoogled.

When all the world's information is so easily accessible, the next logical step is the 'other' information: what is being hidden, and how can we get at it. Inevitably, this information is going to be in some ways confidential, and inevitably the only information that's vaguely inaccessible these days is that which relates to private lives (Facebook aside), police files, and government documents. Enter WikiLeaks.

The reality, however, is the cables released by WikiLeaks weren't really confidential at all. Three million people had access to those files, and while that also shows how colossal the civil service is in the US, again it's the point of getting at and releasing that information that's important, as information only becomes sensitive when it is seen by someone who recognises sensitivity.

Although there are some hugely significant nuggets, and the entire thing is a nightmare for both the US and Britain in terms of secrecy, ultimately the information released by WikiLeaks is irrelevant. On a superficial level, all it does is fill the Guardian for days and provide us with a few personal titbits on world leaders – I mean, how much of WikiLeaks' output have you actually read? On another level, the level that governmental authorities are worried about, it shows up dodgy and illegal practices and is great currency for their enemies. But that's still not the point.

The point is that this is a challenge by the little people: Julian Assange, hackers, protesters, us, against global authorities. You can't get a much bigger version of 'The Man' than the US government. If information is power, then we are taking it back.

The balance of power keeps tipping. The world has evolved in many ways based on how those in power treated those who weren't and what those in power told those who weren't to be true. But now, the powerless are ahead of the powerful thanks to a technological literacy that exceeds the establishment. What if hackers stopped working for governments and tech companies? What if those with such knowledge remained outside of governing authorities?

This is what's happening now. It's almost as if that early '90s Hollywood vision of how the internet or a network of computers could be used to threaten the establishment of global powers, written off as a cringey version of the future, is actually coming to pass.

Alongside WikiLeaks, AnonymousOps – a data network of what the media are calling "hackers" – is attacking websites that intrude on the distribution of the WikiLeaks information. So far it has hit Visa, Mastercard and Paypal. It tried and failed to disrupt Amazon last week. Groups of people like Anonymous and WikiLeaks show that the growing, previously underground movement of an alternative internet is not as unrealistic as once perceived: an internet of free information, that shows up how sanitised much of the current internet, run by multi-billion-dollar tech companies trawling people's details to make more multis of billions, has become.

I'm intrigued by how more and more alternative tools at odds with established powers are emerging. These in turn lead to the creation of parallel societies, which is what is happening in Ireland too. We are becoming a nation so disenfranchised that the government and all its associated organisations have no support from the people and no mandate to make any decisions on our behalf.

With coups unacceptable in the developed world, people check out of established society and begin to function independently of it, forming their own organisations, taking their own actions, existing in their own reality which runs parallel with what is meant to be 'society'.

If this continues to happen and previously iron-cast institutions such as US security or Fianna Fáil begin to crumble, the new establishments will not emerge from the wreckage of such relics, but from new processes that had been beginning to develop while the archaic structures in 'society' were already doomed.

Hold me...

Some of us may silently dread the annual office Christmas booze up, but it's still one of the few times you and your colleagues get to drink Jagerbombs and act inappropriately. That's why on 20 December at 8pm, the Grand Social in Dublin is hosting an Office Christmas Party for the Unemployed for those who lost their jobs this year. Great idea.

Thrill me...

Journalists can't catch a break these days, even the fictional ones. Last week the 'Brenda Starr, Reporter' comic strip was finally laid off from American newspapers, marking what is probably the biggest fictional girl reporter sacking since April O'Neill hung up her yellow jumpsuit.

Kiss me...

Set your Sky+ boxes, the second series of the music programme I present for TG4, Ceol Ar An Imeall (Music On The Edge), is back on 12 January and runs for 10 week; Wednesdays at 11.15pm and Fridays at 6.25pm.

Kill me

Two things made me want to drive a cement truck into various buildings; hearing that Bank of Ireland had a corporate shindig last week with a colossal bar tab and then the good news that bankers' bonuses will be taxed by up to 90%, because suddenly you think, they're still getting bloody bonuses?

umullally@tribune.ie