My mission, if I choose to accept it, is to set previously guarded data free by placing private data back into the public domain. In other words, I want to ‘open source businesses’. I want to get businesses to ‘free up their data’ by means of visualisations to outline what the company does, make awareness to a particular point or just simply involve the public in the development of the company or a particular product. I will have to develop a method of getting data out of companies in such a way that benefits them or interests them in drawing more attention to what they do. Taking the archOS system as an example, the data from the archOS system on water usage is made available, or ‘open sourced’ for the use in visualisations to facilitate awareness to the amount of water that is consumed and used within one building each day. Another example could be Exploratorium’s ‘Cabspotting’ Project where San Francisco’s taxi cabs a traced as they travel through the town using the taxi companies GPS data of the numerous cars’ positions. This data can be considered as the private source code of the company as this is what is used to facilitate the dispatchers in getting a cab successfully to a client. Opening up this data to the public highlights economic, social and cultural trends at the same time as being an advert for the taxi company’s activity.
The idea that releasing source code into the public domain benefits not only the company in its development but also brings a sense of wealth back into the public domain is one that I am keen to make a point of with this project.
Theres an interesting correlation with my triangles that directly relates to my dissertation. I want to get businesses to ‘free up their data’ and release it for people to use for visualisations or projects. To make businesses open up their source code. Taking the archOS system as an example, the data from the archOS is made available for the use in visualisations of the ammount of water used or the Co2 levels. I want to develop a method of getting data out of companies and freeing it up by putting it in the public domain. There will be a continuum of varying companies that I could approach. Another idea to run alongside my project is to becom ‘Mr API’ by aggregating APIs that free up data and use it for other uses such as the Google API.
The first thing on ‘Speedy’s list of things to do for my project’ was to draw some triangles! Basically you pick out the major points of focus for your project and position yourself in the middle…then map out other projects within the same fields so to relate my work with existing projects. Its a good way of establishing a thoughts and idea process as well as starting to turn the theory cogs! My triangle(s) is(are) below:
Below is a list of all the projects I have associated with mine:
Wikipedia
Open Journal Systems
KBPublisher
Twiki
LibreSource
Asterisk
CodePlex
Open Office
KnowledgeTree
Subversion
Open-Xchange
Lotus Notes
Flickr
YouTube
MySpace
Google earth/maps
Pirate University
Public Domain Works
I had my first individual project meeting with Chris Speed to get me thinking about this project. I didn’t feel I managed to get my ideas and thoughts across properly and seemed to get tied up in my thoughts. He got me to think about where my project would be place within the field of open source projects and whether it would relate to open source, collaboration, social networking or something else. It needs a point of focus in which to develop my idea around. We started looking at areas that primarily did not have a collaborative aspect and we broached the idea of a collaborative programming environment. This had some interesting points to it but I was a little scared off by the technical side of it as I am not the greatest programmer in the world! This has got me thinking though…so onward brain!
I’m still struggling with ideas for my project but my dissertation is slowly opening up ideas.
So far I’m thinking about exploring the possibilities of open source technologies and discovering what is achievable with mass collaboration and social networking using the internet as an interface. Maybe this will manifest itself in the form of a website rich internet app., this I am not sure about yet. I am hoping that once I am allocated a tutor I can develop some ideas with him/her. I have started to collect a series of references towards this project which you can view at my del.icio.us page.
Right! I’m getting fed up now of not having brilliant ideas spring into my head instantly!
I have a starting point for my project but cant seem to form it into any decent idea! My starting point is my dissertation subject, this will be the thesis for the project. I have a strong and focused idea for my dissertation but I cant form it into a project idea.
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)
Watch this space…
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