Opensource 2.0: Open sourcing devices

My readers are probably not surprised that a populist and advocate of self-organization like me loves the idea of open source development. I have watched from the sidelines, but I am also looking for opportunities to get actively into the game. I'm not there yet, but I wanted to mention a few things I am particularly excited about.

Connecting developers with average users

A major impediment to the impact of the open source movement has been the huge gulf between open source developers and the "Average User." Open source developers are wonderful people, but they are generally technical wizards who have little interest in ease of use and the limitations of the Average User. Unfortunately, there are probably 100 or even 1000 Average Users for every open source developer. This means that the solutions developed by the open source community have had a relatively small audience. This is a problem not only for the average user, but also for the developers because they receive only a tiny fraction of the feedback that should be available to them in perfecting their designs. This means that innovation has proceeded more slowly than it otherwise would. And as a result even the developers cannot benefit from the innovation that didn't occur. 

I don't know if anyone has invented the equivalent of Moore's Law for feedback and innovation, but let me try to formulate something here.  

The Law of Feedback on Innovation: Innovation accelerates exponentially with the number of reviewers (the number of people using a product and providing feedback). I suggest exponential acceleration because each piece of feedback enables the next generation of feedback, and also because each feedback item that is open to the public can itself be evaluated by the public. In this way good ideas and important improvements will rise to the top and get handled sooner because they will be endorsed by more and more people. 

But I think, at least in the realm of software, that this impediment is starting to get torn down as the gulf between the average user and the open source developer is shrinking. There are three trends contributing to this change:

• The tools of development are getting more user friendly, which enables people who are not quite as technically savvy but more attuned to the needs of the masses to make improvements.
• Developers have started developing not just for themselves but for the average user. Consider Ubuntu and Open Office. I recently had a chance to try it out and I was pleasantly shocked by how familiar and easy to use it was. This is in stark contrast to previous versions of Linux that I have tried that required significant technical expertise to install, configure and use. Ubuntu is graphical, has a robust installer, includes major office software that most people use and that is compatible with the dominant Microsoft standard formats, handles updates and fixes automatically, and also allows people to download other software easily in the form of complete compiled packages. I consider this set of features to be essential in gaining adoption by the Average User.  This will result in much more feedback and accelerated innovation as the market for Linux expands dramatically.
• Functional chunks: Open source development has reach a qualitative change as a function of incremental improvements, and I believe the cause is the creation of meaningful, functional chunks of code that provide substantial real and visible value. It is all well and good for the operating system kernel to be well developed and stabilized, but when user interfaces can be easily adopted and reused, for example, then there exists a bridge to those average users.

Open source devices

This leads me to the second major thing that I am excited about, and that is the development of open source, physical devices. The Chumby is a very early step in this direction, but I think we have much further to go. I look forward to the day when a teenage gal in her garage can assemble a new open source car, for example, as easily as one can develop a new software program today. What we need are device components (like a chassis, motor, motor controller, etc.) that are standardized and make use of standardized interfaces so that people can easily plug and play with them. 

The open source car is really the holy grail, in my opinion. I am tired of waiting for Detroit to do the right thing: let's do it ourselves! When we can be assembling, testing and driving our own cars, then the Age of Open Source Devices will truly be upon us. The driving portion may be one of the biggest hurdles here, given safety regulations. The regulation of cars will need to change as their mode of development also changes. I know there are at least three groups already working on the open source car. SSM, Civic EV,  and OScar.

I look forward to the day in the near future where it is common for technical wizards, average users and genius artists and industrial designers to collaborate on open source projects of all types, both software and hardware. That will be real progress.

The Bush Presidency as Totalitarianism

I would like to suggest that the Bush presidency had more than a few elements of totalitarianism. Some may wonder how this could even be possible in a democracy. 

I believe that three factors were enough to create a governing regime that could legitimately be considered totalitarian. These factors are:

• The consolidation of the media. Although we may seem to have many news sources, when you consider how few individuals and companies have controlling interests in those sources, we might many fewer choices than it initially appears. 
• The "echo chamber" effect. With the deluge of news and possible news stories to cover, news outlets have taken to watching their competitors at least as much as they are watching news unfold in the "real" world. As a result the coverage of our news outlets converges on a limited subset of stories. 
• Lazy and cheap journalism. When we consider how few dollars are left for in-depth investigative reporting, combined with the ease in simply parroting the announcements of major authorities (like the president), we have a media that acts more like the mouthpiece of the authorities than independent watchdogs and investigators.
• Fearmongering as a tool of control. The Bush presidency made extensive use of fear as a tool of control. By creating and exaggerating threats, they were able to amass powers, act in secrecy and pursue an unified agenda that would not have been possible if citizens were not perpetually afraid for themselves, their family, their values and everything else they held dear. I don't think the effects of fear in a populace can be overstated. I know it affected me personally in ways I am only beginning to recognize after the fact.
• American exceptionalism. The Bush administration considered the US to be special and better than other nations and was therefore free to do whatever it wanted. We know that Bush felt that he had a special relationship with God and was authorized by Him to do what he felt was right (all evidence to the contrary). There is nothing more blinding than the belief that what one is doing is intrinsically good, or that you (and your people) have the Truth. There is also nothing more prone to hurt others.
• Neglect and discouragement of citizen input. Consider the millions of regular Americans who came out to oppose starting a preemptive war in Iraq. The will of the people was quite clear. But the Bush administration chose not only to ignore this statement of popular will that was unprecedented in the period since the 60's, it then used all the tools at its disposal to discourage and distance expressions of dissent from the media and other Americans. They interrupted the social influence of Americans on Americans and replaced it with the influence of the state.

If we add these factors together we find a federal administration bent on controlling the populace to achieve its aims, and enabled by a centralized media that was a mouthpiece for their views, frames and agenda.

A definition of totalitarian is as follows: "Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: 'A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul" Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'"

Absolute control may be overstating the actual situation, but I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the Bush presidency sought - if not achieved - totalitarian control.

It will take many years for the citizens of our country to recover their autonomy and bring our democracy back to its full vitality.

The Middle Way for Modern Times

Or, out of the unsustainable sustainability trap

I am committed both to living a balanced life personally and to helping to make the major changes that are needed to create a more sustainable way of life for all of us (in terms of energy, land use, etc.). On the surface, these things seem like the are closely aligned, and they are.

But on another level, they seem to require very different types of energy which to reconcile require a new kind of balance.

At the personal level, living in balance would involve: spending time with friends and family, which requires not working excessive hours, nurturing myself as a whole person including hobbies and side interests, learning to grow some of my own food, biking rather than driving when possible, taking time for reflection and rejuvenation, living in a small town rather than a large city, stopping to smell the roses and admire the sunsets, getting enough exercise, etc.

But the paradox is that trying to promote sustainability at the societal level seems to require abandoning most of these things so that there is more time to work intensively on specific, focused initiatives that will attract broad attention and adoption. If we look at the "start up" business model, we find people working obsessively working long hours to perfect a product, please the necessary investors, and beat competitors to market. To create something new in a world where getting the necessary attention from a distracted and ADD public and media requires superhuman effort, how can personal balance be preserved?

On the other hand, working unsustainably at a personal level to promote societal sustainability must surely be bound to fail. All that unsustainable work requires an unsustainable use of resources. (Think many and frequent plane flights, lots of fast food meals with wasteful packaging, miles of driving, reams of paper, electricity hogging computer use.) And this does not even include the way working unsustainably drives others to also work unsustainably (your competitors, all of the service industry folks you rely on, consultants, etc.). When you factor that in, you end up with exponential contributions to unsustainability in the name of sustainability.

One could possibly imagine getting everyone working in this field to join a "Slow Work" movement similar to the Slow Food movement. It might have some impact and promote a kind of detente that might be helpful, but there would be a contrary motivation even still. To create real solutions that begin to move us towards sustainability will also have to be financially sustainable and generate its own capital towards development. This means they are likely to be businesses or social enterprises. This usually means competition, and in a competitive arena agreements to go slow are certainly bound to be broken.

But there are other problems as well. One relates to the short attention I mentioned earlier. All efforts in this age of overstimulation need to be extremely engaging to hold the attention necessary to get work done, and to be more engaging than other distractions takes a great deal of effort. I am not sure I see a way around this problem until our culture also begins to voluntarily slow down. As society slows down, people will remember that they have a free will and can choose to pay attention to things they value. As they slow down, people begin to have their own sense of what they value in contrast to what they are being force fed by the media. Like the factory farmed meat creatures most of us eat, we are being force fed, in our case we are fed a steady diet of manufactured needs and distraction. The result of this is a loss of choice and will at the individual level and a society careening down a dead end road that no one really would want to be on if they had a little space to stop and think about it. 

Another problem is that our culture is attracted to those who bite too much off, who live on the edge and sometimes fall off. For example, we are dazzled by the rockstar or entrepreneur burning the candle at both ends in service of their vision. Or consider the wall street traders doing billions of dollars of deals, trying to make just a little more than the next guy. We want them to push themselves to the edge of exhaustion, of reasonability, of prudence and beyond. Pushing the limits is sexy. But of course there are major downsides for the individual, their patrons and investors, their spouses, their family and friends, etc. But like a person in an abusive relationship we are dazzled by their boldness and apparent power and stick with them despite their repeated abuses as individuals and as a type. This is something we can also purge our culture of over time.

So we can see that there are many barriers to being able to promote sustainability both effectively and sustainably, which is ironic.

But I do think there may be a way out, and it involves collaboration. Especially in our age of improved 2-way communication tools (cell phones, internet, etc), it is becoming increasingly possible for a group of people to work effectively and powerfully together. No longer do we need the the ONE BIG MAN to make it happen: we can envision and bring to life powerful new realities together. And when you can have many people working together, there is no need for any individual to work unsustainably. Thank god. "Many hands make light work." 

This is what we must strive for: a deeply shared, rich vision of the desired future and powerfully coordinated collective efforts that move us towards sustainability in such a way that each individual can also live their lives sustainably. That will be real progress.