Open Source, Open Society: Remembering the Point of it All. by risa
by Risa Dickens
Open source software releases the long-winded code that lies beneath the bright surfaces of a user interface. It does so in order to contribute to a collaborative environment, to attract contributors, and to demonstrate its degree of commitment to an open society. But for open source to access those deep wells of people and ideas that will make the project viable, it’s generally not enough to provide access to the source code because for most of us these languages mean nothing. Many, many open sourced project fail to attract contributors and simply fade away. Similarly, many political organizations and clubs, fail to attract members.
And so the question is, how do we build systems that include the great clamoring ‘us’ with all our different questions, desires, and experiences of space and time? How do we design a knowledge-building system such that an individual could slip past ideology, attitude, rhetoric and red tape (of governments or of the governence of geeky but important projects) to contribute the good idea that was only visible from their unique concatenation of information and desires?
Code is not separate from documentation or from the interface. The manual, the history of a project, and the graphic design all speak the same thing in different languages and are all interdependent for the success of a project.
This interrelationship is similar to what one finds in film or theatre. The script of a play is not entirely different from the direction and blocking, or from the performance. The final media product is dependant upon a good working system, which is dependant upon a good working relationship between people, and an atmosphere that draws out their best.
Lawrence Lessig has made clear, code is akin to law as well (in Code and Other Laws of Cyber Space). And Steven Weber (in The Success of Open Souce) adds that ‘law’ here is a metaphor- that he would use architecture instead to explain how code can determine our interactions in computerized space. Law is not entirely separate from policy or from the politicians who argue and listen and bring it into effect. The architecture of a building is not entirely separate from the blueprints by designers, or from the people and the usages for which the building is designed.
We could go on for a while, thinking about other kinds of close-knit relationships that would cast some light on the complexity of code. Suffice it to say, even if we are uninterested in programming, we are living in a coded space, one where it has been possible to forget that the whole point of any system is the well-being of interactants. And without access to the source code, without even the theoretical ability to make pragmatic changes or to have your voice be respected and heard, the danger to our individuality can become very great. If we end up living in a world ordered by a small, monied elite then our range of choices can become distorted. To a certain extent, we already live in such a space when we feel unable to choose anything that will not contribute to the destruction of our natural environment.
Fortunately, humans are pretty troublesome in their uniqueness and this kind of centralized planning shows its gaps before too long. And most corporations, I think, have begun to learn this lesson (from Enron, or from the failure of, and unrelenting opposition to, totalitarian governments, or, more recently, from the tragic failure of centralized FEMA) and, instead of over-focusing on the bottom line, are looking to new management consultants for ways to ‘enhance their diversity’ and enable their employees to think ‘outside the box.’
This is why I think that ordering and communicating organs will continuously develop and improve their ability to function by incorporating knowledge and mechanisms from the open source process. Because they’ll have to in order to compete with organizations where the latency of systems depending on collaboration and voluntary action is overcome by putting the workspace on a two-way, end to end network, where contributions can accumulate and remain visible over time to anyone able to access the network. Where the right to fork is protected, creating true competition and dynamic waters for innovation. As we’ve seen in the history of open source, rather than this creating a chaos of small projects with no momentum, over time open code and the right to fork can create a few strong centers that are healthy and happily chosen.
As Harold Innis writes in his Idea File: “Individuals from frontier points were effective in briging about reorganizations but were less successful in providing for continuous control.”P21
Leave a Comment