In last week's episode, we talked
about makers, and the open sourcing of all or most
of the things.
Let's see what you had to say.
Zhegames on the Idea Channel subreddit
linked to a couple other threads across reddit,
where people were having discussions about this episode.
So if you want to see what other people in other communities
had to say about this, these are some good links.
These discussions were pretty good.
L0c0dantes, also on the subreddit,
started a really interesting conversation
about the relationship, the open sourcing of things
has to do with safety.
And it turns that there are both pros and cons
as far as safety is concerned when you are open sourcing
things.
And we'll talk a little bit more about this later,
but the conversation that happened here
was also ace-- really good.
Kretenkobr2 provides a pros and cons list
for pervasive open sourcing.
And I just wanted to point this out,
because I think that we are about to hit most, if not all,
of these pros and cons.
So if you don't want to watch the rest of this comment
response video, you could basically
just read this comment.
So, nailed it, I guess.
Roidroid and a bunch of other people
pointed out open source ecology, which maintains,
amongst many other things, an open source trailer project.
So this is something that is rad and totally worth
checking out if you're interested in learning
more about open source ecology.
Ashley Knapp writes a really great comment
about the frustration in not been authorized
to fix the things that you own and that some people will just
go ahead and repair those things,
even if they are not actually licensed to.
But then it ends on this really good short idea
which is I think important to point out,
which is just because something is open source doesn't
necessarily mean that it is morally good or desirable,
that it is just a fact of its construction and availability.
And I think that this is something that's
really important to just make clear,
that open source does not necessarily
equate across the board awesomeness, I guess.
It just indicates open sourceness.
Davis Snow and KaosNoKamisama raise really interesting points
about the nature of ownership as it relates to the objects
and technology in our lives.
That if you do pay an amount of money to own something,
doesn't that mean that you should be able to rip it open
and maintain or repair it should you own all parts of it,
as opposed to in the situations like the tractor, or your car,
or your computer, your cellphone,
license it in some way?
Should you just have access to all of it?
And I think this is a really interesting and really
complicated thing, because what is it that you own?
Do you own this physical instance
of this thing which then has instances of other things baked
into it, or do you own the whole totality of its operation?
And I think like KaosNoKamisama outlines,
there's a part of the hacker ethos
that says that you should have it all.
That you should not only have it all, but have access to it all.
And I think I tend to lean in that direction as well,
but like I said, man, it's a complicated set of things.
Basil Parrott writes about crochet
as a kind of microcosm of what's possible within communities
when open source is the norm, and how the kind of open source
parts of crocheting on the internet
are vibrant communities that are invested in collaboration
and sharing and how exciting that is.
And this really makes me wonder about,
I don't know, like the history of crochet?
Because I think of it as something
that is almost inherently open source,
but that might just be because of my association
I have with it with craft, and craft
being a thing that is about communities,
and people coming together and sharing their knowledge
and sharing their resources for the things
that they are making.
But I could absolutely see how crocheting would eventually
become maybe a mass craft, or a mass art in some way.
And now with the internet, people
are able to find crocheting communities to then get back
to what I would think as the sort of original, maybe
old school crocheting, crocheting paradigm?
But I don't know.
I'm going to go.
There's some googling I have to do.
I'm finding myself suddenly interested in crochet.
Switchlurk and Ethan Parcell write really awesome comments
about how things like poetry, literature or philosophy
kind of already are open source to a certain degree, especially
when you consider the fact that there are, in some sense,
base level thoughts or ideas that reference
concrete justifications or sources, source material,
or bibliographies.
Or the fact that there are creative endeavors that
indicate how they were put together,
or how their constraints were considered.
You can see that these things are in some way open source.
And I think that the idea that I was trying to get at
is that there is some kind of pure experience
that is inherent to philosophy and poetry that
would make it difficult to open source in that way.
That the basis of those things is
in some way purely either aesthetic or intellectual.
But the more I think about it, the more
I kind of disagree with my own statement.
Because that then would claim that things like programming
or manufacturing are not in some way,
or at some base level, aesthetic or intellectual,
and they absolutely, positively are.
So I've come around on this point.
Madeline Koller, Evan Johnsen and Simon Dahinten
all write really great comments about one of the big dangers
if everything were to be open source, which
is the lack of standards and how that would potentially
affect usability.
That if everything is open source,
you have high customizability and you have high incidence
of individuality in the technologies or implementations
of those technologies.
But then what suffers is a widespread understanding
of how those things operate, how those things work,
how they interact with other technologies.
And a big example of that I think you always see for this
is Android.
It is highly customizable, but for a lot of people
is infinitely confusing.
And so by keeping things closed in some sense,
you are able to protect standards.
And I wonder whether or not this is really like, there really is
a one-to-one relationship here.
If it would be possible to have pervasive, open source
technology, but still maintain some kind of standard
where you don't have this weird individuality
or customizability creep.
And I don't know, I mean, I'm not
so embedded in the technology world
to be able to say confidently that that is a thing that's
easy to do, but I would be curious to know what all of you
think.
Xuul and Ed Kauffmann raise really important concerns
about what happens when you open source dangerous stuff,
like when you open source encryption, which
is its already open sourced.
Or when you open source weapons or firearms, which
to a certain degree you could also argue
are already open sourced.
And one of the responses to this that I saw that I really liked
was that there's a certain comfort maybe,
or there's a certain defense or protection
inherent in the enemy knowing the system.
That if you know exactly how things are built
and that information is widely available,
then you know to a certain degree what
people who want to misuse or break that thing will do
and will be able to do with those things.
And so whether or not that is a solution
to all of these problems, that is a very present solution
in something like encryption, maybe less so
when we're talking about people wanting to build
their own open source firearms.
But there is a sort of more global,
and I think more complete solution
to this problem offered by, hold on, Romaji,
who said that it is maybe good to open source 85% of things,
but that 100% of things might be too much.
I think I can get done with this.
I'm picking up what you're putting down, Romaji.
Brun, yeah, so I'm recording this the day before that video
goes up, so I don't know exactly how it's going to go.
But just in case it does go this way,
to anybody who is heading over to that video
to have a calm, reasonable and respectful conversation
about this very interesting and very complex situation,
thank you for being calm, and reasonable, and respectful.
Ryan, the first and maybe the last Idea Channel episode that
disproves Betteridge's Law.
We should insert some crowd applause right here.
Morton, can we do that?
[APPLAUSE]
We did it.
We did-- mission accomplished.