Why I'm Interested

“Power to the People” is one of John Lennon’s famous songs with implicit socialist ideas. Though this song refers to a political idea, it is related to main idea of this movement in digital world. Before that lecture, to be honest, I knew nothing about it, not to mention Linux and Linus Torvalds. But what really impressed me were the ideas of sharing resources and contributing as a virtual community. The idea is far from an idea one. Let me an analogy about the relationship between open source software and proprietary software, although it is a primitive one. It is just like sending telegraphic and e-mail messages. In the 19th century, people knew nothing about the coded message but relied on the professional to encode and decode. At the present, when you send and receive e-mails, you are given the power to control.

I know it can hardly compare with the analogy “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric Raymond, an open source software advocate. In his essay, the so-called Linux Law, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”, sounds colloquial, but it is insightful indeed. Also, his explanations of the hacker culture in the field of anthropology and economics are interesting.

Apart from the development of software, “Open Source Intelligence” (OS-INT), which Stalder and Hirsh (2002) defines as “the collaborative gathering and analysis of information”, is the area I want to further explore. When "You" was awarded Time Person of the Year 2006, it showed the growing importance and recognition of on-line collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, such as the “Web 2.0” services like Wikipedia, Youtube, and MySpace. In fact, we are more familiar with it even we might be confused by “Open Source Intelligence”.

Among these, I have particular interest in wikipedia. I am sure most of us have visited Wikipedia and even contributed. I remember about year ago I wrote an article on wikipedia too and it is still here, but slightly modified. It will be very interesting to compare wikipedia with Encyclopædia Britannica. Thus, it will be great fun to explore in detail.