I went to Open Everything in London yesterday (London, November 6, 2008), an event to discuss everything about openness, participation and self-organisation from open technology, media, education, workplace design, philanthropy, public policy and politics.
Glyn Moody’s talk was called ‘Openness: An Idea whose time has come?’ He put forth the case that the world started open, became enclosed (land, intellectual property etc) and is now perhaps shifting back towards an open state where we understand that true growth and innovation comes from being able to build things collaboratively and openly based on what has gone before. ...
Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation gave a talk on the Value of Openness which gave some great economic examples. ...
Charles Leadbeater talked about the comments on his YouTube video promoting his new book We Think. ... Even though something is open, it doesn’t mean everyone can use it - they may be constrained by lack of prior knowledge for example. But perhaps we should aim for open knowledge, access, communication and decision making.
... Do we know why people want knowledge? What do they do with it that changes their lives and society? Sometimes openness might prevent things of value happening, so new processes and possibly a new social capitalism needs to be developed if we are to understand how to get the best from open approaches. We also need to accept the limitations - an open approach doesn’t mean that barriers like time, energy and attention disappear even if technology does enable people to do many things quicker and better. ...
... When the web is useful it is easier to see social/academic/financial credit as a bonus of action, not the purpose. ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
