After mulling over my initial ideas I decided that it wouldn’t really have any mileage and if I am to write a successful dissertation then the subject matter must have some depth to it and enable me to come to a proper conclusion.

Following on from my initial ideas, I started to think about how social networking sites expand and the mass collaboration that is involved in generating their content. I remember reading an article on how mass collaboration over the internet is changing the way businesses operate with sites like Youtube and Myspace making millions out of user generated content. This also got me thinking about the ways in which open source technology has changed our interaction with the web. Has open source had a effect on other processes or is it confined to the web?

I have found some interesting sites to get me started on this subject:
The effect that Open Source Software has had on the IT world - This article is from the Linux forums and outlines the basic effects of open source on the IT community
opensource.org - This site has some useful definitions and documentation on the OSI (open source initiative) .