Open Source and Change

Jeremy Lee has written an excellent piece called Open Source and change where he talks a bit about he social implications of the movement that we all know and love. This is definately worth your time.

On Monday night, I was having a conversation with a nurse and a social worker about technology and the future. Self-described technophobes, they were essentially waiting for the hammer to fall on their way of life, and technology was to blame. All they saw was the juggernaut of the silicon-elite bearing down on them, taking jobs, spoiling traditional ways of doing things. "We'll all just be pushing buttons" one said.

The strange thing was that I, as a self-confessed technophile, programmer, and believer in a future made better by computers, was never percieved as a threat. Their perceptions of the grim future assumed a kind of inhuman steel edifice. A flesh-and-blood person sitting in front of them, animated with wonder for the future, just didn't fit the picture. In the end, they were just scared of what they didn't understand.

A hour of talking, and they went away knowing more. I think I did at least a little to alleviate their fears: I was someone from the other side who had come back to tell them it was all OK. With my Palmpilot and GPS and my Bag of Tricks, I carry more tech around than most. My memory is in my Pilot, my sense of direction is in the GPS, and my view of the future has always been wrapped up in computers. I'm a mental Borg, unable to even think without support from a strata of silicon. And I like to think I'm a nice guy too. In their eyes, that was all it took. Just by being interested in what each other said, we built a bridge of words.

I showed them around my worldview; that computers are a tool to be grasped and used as hard as one can. I noted that modern artists use everything at their disposal, from camel-hair brushes to power saws to photoshop. And many would rather give up their brushes than the other two. "But computers are not accessible!" to which I replied that a modern PC costs far less than a car, and is still falling. Soon it will cost less than the average bike.

The idea they most identified most with was that of the Open Source movement! I described it as a Gift Culture, and outlined how the Linux community is taking on the words largest corporate software producer, and winning. Social workers are used to the idea of communities. They were fascinated by the idea that the people they'd been thinking of as "The Elite" were spending their nights and weekends drinking coke and eating pizza, hacking away at code and then giving it away, for the public good and because it's the right thing to do, and yes, for kudos and fame.

That last part is important to mention. People always wonder what the catch is when they hear about Open Source, the ingrained notion that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Altrusm is simply not a factor in many people's world view, and the suggestion that we're really doing for the fame agrees with their preconceptions. I'll hit this topic again later.

Once technology was humanized, the conversation moved on to explore that theme. Hackers vs. Suits. People vs. The Government. Free vs. Proprietary. This is John Katz's ground: he knows it better than I, so I'll move on.

Bill Joy talks about 'dislocations' in the technical sense. If I understand the term right, dislocations are like the sparkplug in the fossil. They challenge all the existing notions and, if you're lucky, cause of of those pesky Paradigm Shifts after which nothing is the same. Well, a lot of people don't like having their paradigms shifted. Which is a problem, because it's happenning faster and faster.

There's a distinction to be made between different types of 'progress'. Digital TV is progress in one sense; it's yet another manifestation of Moore's Law. But DTV will fit in to most people's worldviews just as easily as they take the place of the old set on the shelf. It's just TV, only better! Think about the phone system. Most of the truly revolutional changes in telephony recently have been in the local loop services, yet no-one thinks anything about the amazing mass of optic fibres, routers, ATM switches, and computers involved. But make an international call - using obsolete satellites that have been in orbit for a decade or more - and that's what causes a disturbance in familiar thought patterns. "I've been talking to someone on the other side of the world!" they exclaim.

The truly amazing things that the Open Source community have been doing are not technological: they're social. Which is a shock to me too. I always thought I was just writing code! Turns out the code is like the sparkplug: amazing not only for itself, but also for the implications of it's existence. Linux is the proof that thousands of people from around the world can, in their spare time, challenge long-held and dominant power structures. It means that Altrusm really can accomplish great things, and that computers can be a tool for building communities rather than tearing them down. It means that interest is almost equivalent to action, that we're living in a world where anyone can grab the tiller and steer a new course, just be being who they are. Wow.

It means that everything is changing again. Still.