Open Everything
This is an essay I wrote about a year ago. Finally decided to post it up here on the ‘ole personal blog. I’ve learned a good bit more since I wrote this and intend to write a follow up to take care of a few loose ends. For instance, there are now some references that simply don’t make sense, such as Google supporting OpenMoko—we’ve all heard of Android by now, and I’m also trying to make Objectivism, free markets and the Open model “jive” a bit better in my mind. But a follow up isn’t a follow up unless the original is available, now is it?
It also bears mentioning that my use of the terms “socialize” and “socialization” would perhaps be more clear using a different word. What I mean to imply is that the information and knowledge is moving in the direction of becoming part of our intellectual commons.
Without further delay…
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Throughout history we have seen technology do amazing things. When Gutenberg gave the world the printing press in the mid 15th century, time-persistent communication went from requiring a person learned in print or calligraphy to requiring someone able to swap metal die plates in and out of the press. The time required to distribute information was reduced, and information become more social. Nearly four hundred years later, early in the 19th century, Joseph Henry and Samuel Morse moved the telegraph into use around the globe. The time required to distribute information was reduced, and information became more social.
Before the end of the 19th century, the brightest minds of the world had produced methods of recording and disseminating all types of information. Joseph Niepce took the first photograph. Thomas Edison made the first record player. Eadweard Muybridge became the father of motion picture and Coleman Sellers showed the world the Kinematoscope, the first motion picture projector. Potentially of most importance, Maxwell predicted radio waves, Hertz proved they existed and Marconi and Loomis demonstrated how to apply them to transmit information without wires. The time required to distribute information was reduced, and information became more social.
This was all before the 20th century even rolled around on the world’s calendar. The 20th century gave us fixed-wing flight, rocket engines, vacuum tubes and transistors, and in 1969 we have ARPANET. The beginnings of the Internet, it only involved a connection between four universities but grew quickly to more than two hundred connections in 1981, causing compatibility issues as each connected computer often required custom software to communicate. And then in the year of my birth, 1982, a standard protocol called TCP/IP emerged. The basis for what we know as the Internet had arrived. The time required to distribute information was reduced to mere seconds and information became a truly social resource.
Building on academic ideals held for centuries, today the Internet gives us something we’ve never had before–the ability to socialize any product. The best and perhaps most well known example is Linux, an operating system giving incumbent software producers like Microsoft and Sun Microsystems a reason to be scared for their ability to maintain profits. Linux relies on thousands of software programmers and hardware systems integrators around the globe to work together while not being anywhere near each other physically. Their work is given to the world under the GNU Public License, the GPL. Anyone with the knowledge to do so may edit the source code which defines how the operating system works. The only stipulation is that if they wish to disseminate their derivative work, they must also provide the source under the GPL. Open source versions of nearly all types of software are now available free of charge. Quite often open software bests commercially available software.
With the right group of people, anything can be socialized. OpenCola, a company in Canada, makes their Coca-Cola clone’s recipe available to all under the very same license as Linux, the GPL. Hardware projects such as Neuros, a networked media center, and Daisy, a portable MP3 player, are showing that the same types of engineers involved with Linux, are willing to put the time and effort in to produce physical products as well. A Taiwanese company, FIC, has been facilitating the work on the first open cell phone software, OpenMoko to be run on their Neo1973 cellular phone. Rumor has it that Google is looking to promote OpenMoko and Ubuntu Linux Mobile as a standardized mobile platform. There is even a group working on the first open car, appropriately named OScar.
So what does this mean for the economy? Depending on who you ask, very bad, or as I see it, very good things. The phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” summarises it best. Manufacturers the world over are already embracing Linux to bring development costs down. Besides desktop and laptop computers, Linux now runs cell phones, cars, musical instruments, home theater equipment, robotics, you name it, there is probably a version of the product that runs Linux. And if the product doesn’t run Linux, you can almost be garunteed that Linux was used in the development process at some point. Because Linux is free for anyone to use, the bottom line R&D cost of products which use it is reduced.
The trick is finding ways to give away one product while using alternative channels for profit. While the people with the expertise can still utilize the product for free, others who do not possess the knowledge to utilize it, must still rely on you and your product support. As anyone loves product which is given to them, the companies who are willing to give garner public relations boosts like few other tactics can. In the United States, the cellular market uses this tactic extensively, although in somewhat more dubious and often insincere ways. By “simply” signing a two-year contract, customers can get basic handsets free of charge, as the cellular provider aims to make the money back off monthly service fees. While the profit margins play out to insane percentages that make customers hesitant and flat out unwilling to trust cellular providers, this does provide a good example of the basic concept.
In the late ’80s IBM and Microsoft were battling over a joint project which would later split in 1990 to give us Microsoft’s Windows NT and IBM’s OS/2. Thanks to Microsoft’s existing market dominance, OS/2 faltered and faded. IBM needed a solution. Later in the ’90s IBM looked to Linux as their answer. By providing the time and effort of their own programmers, IBM began assisting the Linux community, adding code while becoming intimately familiar with the then fairly young operating system. The expertise gained, combined with the trust of the community, allowed IBM to start heading back towards dominance in the server market. Because IBM knew how to provide Linux support, they were able to give the market a viable, less expensive, easier to maintain alternative to Microsoft’s NT line of server software. IBM was able to harness the power of giving away both time and product to give themselves the ability to sell more server software and support solutions.
We are now in a time when the cost of software and information product is negligible. Technologies on the horizon promise to drive costs of production for physical product close to zero within the next fifty to seventy-five years. Molecular nanotechnology, genetics and robotics will allow for anyone to create anything they wish using atoms of carbon pulled from the air and ingots of various, more rare molecules. Take a look through arXiv.org, or for news in lay mans terms, physorg.com, to get an idea of what is coming to a home near you in the years to come.
The socialization of everything is on the horizon. Corporations working from Industrial Age thinking are beginning to find that they have no way to compete against their Information Age competitors. The new companies are willing to give their products away while finding other channels to provide profit. It has come to a point where “evolve or die” is the new mantra of technology driven industry. Linux is giving Windows a hard time now, OScar and future projects are set to give GM, Honda, Ford and others a hard time in the future. In a world filled with people who simply want to help, and are willing to donate time for their own benefit as well as the benefit of others, all products will eventually be socialized. It is simply a matter of if you do it, or if someone else does it. Fighting the inevitable will only get you so far.
Tags: Economics, Education, Open Source, Philosophy, Technology
