|
Reader question: Please explain “transparency genie is out of the bottle” as in this passage: “That’s the coolest part about this whole thing, the democratization of this information,” he said. “The transparency genie is out of the bottle. It’s unprecedented access. It’ll only get better.” My comments: The genie in the bottle refers to the ancient Arabian fable involving a poor fisherman and an evil genie in the bottle. The fisherman pulled a bottle from the sea and heard a voice from within. It was the voice from the genie who had been imprisoned in the bottle for 10,000 years as a form a punishment. The fisherman hence opened the bottle to let the genie out. Instead of being grateful to the fisherman for saving his life, the genie would kill the fisherman instead because he had come late. Had someone come by earlier, say, 9,990 years before, the genie said he would have been grateful and would have demonstrated his gratefulness by making their wish, whatever it is, come true. Now, however, the genie said he is fed up with the waiting and therefore has decided to kill anyone who has the misfortune of letting him out of the bottle. The fisherman, therefore, had to die... Hence, if someone says “the genie is out of the bottle”, they mean to say something bad is going to happen – and it’s unavoidable. In the example from the top, by likening “transparency” to “the genie”, the person being quoted meant to say this: Now that the people have gained access to information, they’ll keep wanting for more. To those who oppose to this “democratization of information”, i.e. free information to the public, this must be something terrible. However, there’s nothing they can do now to stop the process – As the genie out of the bottle cannot be put back in, the wheels of the democratic process can not be rolled backwards. | 
