Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Open Everything

Author:Joshua Allen
Posted:8/30/2000; 11:33:28 PM
Topic:Open Blueprint Companies
Msg #:20565 (In response to 20531)
Prev/Next:20564 / 20566

Well, ignoring the fact that people have always been sharing ideas and information, this is a very thought-provoking post. First thing that came to mind is the idea of "transparency" that Americans demand of their government. In many ways, multinational corporations are becoming the new city-states, and may (I hope) eventually replace countries and states as the most important forms of voluntary collective activity. So why would we not demand the same level of openness from our corporate entities as from our national governments?

Another thought was the that of Karl Popper's "Open Societies". George Soros is the most visible supporter of these ideas today. The idea can be summarized as "there is no universal truth, any collective that thinks it has discovered the one true approach or idea is doomed to failure, and the successful approach is to always look for proof that you do not have the one true approach". Soros points out that the facists or nazis were not entirely wrong or stupid, but that when they hardened and decided they had discovered the real truth, that arrogance was their downfall. In this spirit, Soros claims that the darwinian idea of "survival of the fittest" has gone too far; capitalism/"free market" and increasingly the whole western outlook consider darwinism axiomatic. Soros believes that this is a cautionary sign for western culture.

Now to twist things a bit, I believe that the whole idea of giving things away for free ("open source", "open blueprint", etc.) goes against Karl Popper's ideas of open societies. Not everything needs to be open, and not everything should be. Claiming that something like an "open blueprint" company is good for you personally is one thing. Claiming that it is good as a general rule is something that won't generally get much argument, either, because you have associated it with the hallowed "open source". So if your intent was to slide the idea in without much resistance, that is a good approach. On the other hand, I if you were interested in considering the merits of such an approach, it might be more effective to approach it from the other side, and ask "which parts of my business should be 'closed blueprint'?" This would perhaps clear away some of the chaff blown in by such over-caffienated memes as "free market" and "open source".

peace,
-J

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