Posts Tagged: open source

‘How can people in business school get any sleep right now?’

That’s what I thought reading this book. ‘Free’, by Chris Anderson, leaves me clearly convinced that the internet has unleashed a new alternative to doing business. It has taken what King Gillete started and expanded it exponentially. By reducing distribution costs to zero, it has turned 20th century ‘bait and switch’ free into 21st century, ‘truly free.’ Which means you can literally give away free products that you never make money from and still be hugely popular and successful in business (like Google or Linux.)

1.) Does this model translate to art? Software and digital service providers (like Google or Wikipedia) make it work. But can independent musicians or illustrators or writers make it happen? Art is a fickle game – could a rapper make good money giving away his or her music away totally for free from the beginning?

2.) Why are traditional news outlet struggling so much in this model? They have operated in a semi-free environment for a long time. Is it an stubborn old school attitude that refuses to let them convert to free? Or is it that many of them are owned by larger companies that won’t allow them the flexibility to change?

3.) How will the Free model affect software giants like Microsoft and Apple? So far, cloud computing wins for convenience and novelty, but Google Docs still lags behind Microsoft Office. And the average person will pay a dollar for a song before they go futz with retarded music formats and spam laden torrent sites. Free still feels like an internet phenomenon – how long before it invades our home, and we have free cable? Free desktop computing? And truly free music?

Benkler

1. How much peer-to-peer sharing is okay? In terms of what should be open source and available for free to users?

After the reading, I have determined that it is quite difficult to determine how much peer-to-peer sharing is okay. I have an interesting opinion about this I think. I try to buy movies and music if I want it and avoid getting copies from friends. However, I feel that a lot of people in culture today think that movies, music, etc. are overly priced and that we are being shafted when it comes to how much we are paying for it. I think this is one of the main reasons why peer-to-peer sharing has become such a problem in the recent years. People simply do not want to pay $20-25 dollars for a movie, when they could get it for free. The whole concept of pirating media brings up an entirely new topic to deal with.

I do not, however, think that everything should be open source and available for free to all users. If this were the case, then there would be no prestige in creating work, because then everyone could have it. It is exactly the same reason as to why music artists got so upset over the Napster case. They created those songs, and wanted to reap the benefits from them. Open source software is a cool thing though. I love it when I can get a program for free and not have to buy it. So there is definitely a conflicting case to be made about what media should be free.

2. What can motivate us, as designers, to produce information, knowing that other people are going to use it? Should we be okay with wanting to inspire other people from our work?

After thinking about this question again, I do not think that it is really relevant. We, as designers, should be honored for other people to like our work enough to want to be inspired from it and use it. After all, this is one of the reasons why we create work. We want it to inspire creativity in other people.

Shirky

3. Is everyone really capable of “publishing” in today’s culture? How can we truly define publishing and the art of being a professional?

After the reading, I have determined that with the way that media is turning these days in our culture, it truly does seem that everyone can publish. After all, it seems that some people are getting jobs because of their blogging capabilities. The example mentioned in the book about the lost phone, was very representative of this. Evan simply published a website about the lost phone, and people reacted to it immediately. It just goes to show that anything you put on the web is “published” and made available for anyone to see. We are all capable of publishing work, we don’t necessarily have to be a professional in the field. With the changing media, the definition of publishing and being a professional has changed drastically. You no longer have to be a professional in our field to publish something. I am sure that the media will continue to change and these ideas will change along with it.

In response to Taylor’s question of “Has the growth of mass media use led to the depletion of “close-knit” or “strong” affiliation relationships? I feel that mass media has hurt some relationships in our culture today. Think about it, how many young relationships fail because one person gets mad that some other person is posting stuff on their boyfriend/girlfriend’s Facebook wall? A lot of this also has to deal with trust. I feel like as a culture, we are trusting people less and less.