Web 2.0 Like a Brick in the Face
May 24th, 2008 by AndrewWhile Andy and I have been (rather lazily) maintaining this site for more than a year, and I regularly try to read and participate in a variety of blogs, the true potential that the Internet has as a medium for intellectual synthesis never really sank in for me until I saw it first hand this past week.
I’m alluding, of course, to the discussion that has cropped up in response to my airship thesis. Once Engadget picked it up, the trackbacks started to really go wild, and it’s been really fascinating to see the different perspectives that people have based on where they’re coming from. The post has even been translated into Spanish and Chinese, and in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, it’s been eye-opening for me to see the sense of urgency that many commenters have about the idea. The humanitarian nature of the project has really galvanized discussion about the technology in a way that I would have never expected.
What I’ve found most heartening, though, is the sheer volume of ideas and applications that people have posited to build on and shape the concept. The Internet has the capability to link so many different people and points of view, and when you throw them all together in one place, you’re bound to get something out of it.
By glaring contrast, it’s got me thinking about the nature of the design industry, and how fiercely protective young designers are about their ideas, when realistically everyone would stand to benefit far more from collaboration. I think there could be real potential in an open-source design project, or at least a ‘net-wide brainstorming session to kick off a competition.
Maybe in the not-too-distant future, pulltheskydown should host one?
May 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
While I completely agree that more collaboration helps everyone (be it amongst designers, scientists, or any other creative endeavour), the problem always comes down to getting recognition for your work. Within the scientific community (for it is what I know) collaboration is common, and it seems to be standard practice to send around results for feedback before publishing them. These efforts result in published papers though, each containing every author’s name and contact information. The anonymity the web offers, while incredibly useful for some projects, to me seems to put this ability to achieve recognition for a project at risk… Although, come to think of it, open source programs, wikis, data, and whatever else is made easily accessible, while whoever works on these projects (sadly) remain in obscurity. This comment is probably cyclical and useless then, but maybe someone else has the same fears/knows why they may indeed be valid.
I do love the idea of hosting some sort of competition… I’ve been privately toying with the idea for a while now.. we’ll talk
May 26th, 2008 at 12:35 am
The structure of the publications might change a bit, but in a highly participatory environment, I don’t see why you couldn’t still get proper recognition. If anything, I’d say that having an open-source approach has the potential to make it even harder for someone to steal your research, since it’s been now very clearly evidenced in the public domain that “x” person had “y” idea at “z” time.
After all, that’s the entire basis of patent law. By making the workings of your idea utterly transparent and available, the system grants you protection. Though I guess I don’t know whether the nature of scientific discovery more closely resembles a patent or a trade secret (i.e. the recipe of Coca Cola), which you certainly would not want widely available.
I think I mentioned this when the discussion cropped up the other day, but here’s a link to the Sci Am article on collaborative science that I read:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk
July 4th, 2008 at 12:22 am
[...] I’m starting to get really excited about the whole open source design concept. [...]