Working title: Can open source save the world?

‘Open source’ technologies are transforming the way we use and interact with the web with many social networking sites thriving off mass collaboration and also making millions for the site owners from user generated content. ‘Open source’ technology is also playing a massive role in transforming scientific practices, business, the economy and politics.

Businesses today are adapting their business model to accommodate emerging technologies such as ‘open source’. With sites like YouTube and MySpace founding a new form of business that has emerged from mass collaboration and user generated content termed ‘wikinomics’. This new ‘open source’ business model has replaced traditional forms of teamwork with “collaborations on an astronomical scale” (Tapscott, 2006). There is also a theory that one day these technologies could assist in the prevention of famine, disease and global warming. (West, 2007)

In my dissertation I plan to explore the implemented and potential uses of ‘open source’ processes and technologies within science, the economy and technology and try to deduce its future within these fields. At the outset I plan to define ‘open source’ as a technology and a process as well as take a look into its history, touching on its close relationship with the hacking community and its place within the advent of ‘web 2.0’. From this I hope to discover why it has gained such a prominent place in today’s technologies. Furthermore, I plan to investigate the politics involved in free software and the ’open source’ ideology and any legal issues that surround the subject in order to provide a good base for deducing whether ‘open source’ technologies have the potential to produce profound transformations in economic models, scientific practices and technological advances for a better future.

From my initial reading I feel I will be able to provide a substantial argument for the use of ‘open source’ technologies in order to solve complex problems and potentially aid the resolution of worldwide issues.

Bibliography (list in progress):

Benkler, Yochai (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, London: Yale University Press
Stallman, Richard. Gay, Joshua (ed) (2002) Free Software, Free Society. Sebastopol: O’Reilly
Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony . (2006) Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London: Atlantic Books
West, Ed. Macdonald, Fiona (ed) (2007) The keys to open the Net. Metro, 29 August. p17.
Rushkoff, D. (2003) Open Source Democracy: How online communication is changing offline politics (online resource). http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/opensourcedemocracy2
Bowman, S & Willis, C. (2003) We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information (online resource). http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php