I don’t see myself as a technical person. I am an adult educator who
happens to like using technology to teach adults. However, learning
about the history of open source was, dare I say it....fun?! Admittedly I
was lost at several points in the videos and readings when the actual
technology was being discussed, however, I found it fascinating watching
Revolution Open Source.
I was most intrigued by the philosophical beginnings of open source
from Richard Stallman and the GNU project. After just completing the
section on open licensing and creative commons attributions I couldn’t
help but notice the similarities between CC and the GNU general public license.
Also Stallman’s view that software should be free, as in freedom-not
price tag, seems to have had a diluted, but lasting impression on the
open source movement. Linus Torvald (Linux) may have seen Stallman as
radical in his thoughts and more detrimental than good for the movement,
but as with anything that is aiming at social change, there seems to be
a need for someone who is extreme in order for balance to be found.
As
with the previous section on open licensing I immediately saw parallels
with open source and adult learning. Most noticeably the idea of social
change. Most adult education programs are grounded historically in the
idea of social change, with foundational educators such as John Dewey
and Paulo Friere often studied. Somehow as a society we seem to be
struggling with how to maintain democratic values and ideals while not
letting the capitalistic economic structure turn us in to a society that
is “owned” and controlled by those with power and money that capitalism
brings.
This brings me back to the here and now. Watching The Coming War on General Computation
certainly highlighted the fact that what is happening now concerning
copyright and piracy is really just the beginning. However, I couldn't
help but think of this coming war in science fiction terms as Cory
Doctorow explained his concern about having a computer in him (hearing
aid) while being in a computer (car) stating; “I want to know that these
technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, and to prevent
me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests.”
Imagining the day that computers could be working against us and not
just for us, seems very Battlestar Galactica to me and that is a scary
thought. However, the main thing I took from this is that we are on the
verge of something really big and transformative for society as a whole,
something much larger than the information age. We need to pay
attention to law makers as they struggle with how to deal with this
change and be vocal when the changes come.
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