Open Source and the Value Boom

I spoke to a friend of mine after I wrote the previous entry on "more specifics" and talked to him about my idea. He is a staid fellow steeped into the practices of business and when he heard what I had to say he smiled, "it’s doable", and I knew he meant on a technological side. Or I thought. I prodded him with,

"Yeah, I didn't think that it was going to be too hard technologically. It seemed to me, and my small understanding of such tools, to be doable."

"No. I meant the whole idea. It is doable. I don't know if it will be done, that takes the market and fortune really, but it is possible. It is a good idea."

"Even the bit about changing global value system?"

"Yes, even the bit about changing a global value system. I know and understand your philosophical lens when you say that. That you believe everything affects everything, that each and every motion is, and I quote you here, 'via chaos theory, that every variable within a system has an effect on the system, that the system is malleable to all acts of the variable.' Yes, Dear Guru, I know. But I look at it like a savage entrepreneur and look at things like Google. They transformed the entire value system of research, even petty research, from a tedious time consuming and mostly either done by student or professional, act to one that is relatively free of any labor. Now we can argue that this has given rise to charlatans, false information and the lot, but we cannot argue how this caused a fundamental change in the system. You would call it an ecological change and its subsequent environmental change e.g. how reporters work, how students study, how schools are even set up. We can even look at the rise of the Ipod and how we look at music, how we pay for it, what the 'record' store will look like. Hell, even cell phones. We are so used to change and ecological shifts now that technology has raced so fast that it doesn't even seem strange until we spend some time on it. I used to have over a 100 phone numbers memorized, Guru, now I can't even remember my own phone number. That is a commercial driven technological advancement in communications-the cell phone, that has a direct effect on my memory. I blame you for making me think like this, but it is no less true.

So, with all of this, I think that what you are trying to do is possible. I don't know if it is probable, but it is much more probable than improbable I would say."

"What they hell does more probable than improbable mean?" We laughed.

"What you are talking about with your articles, I like the name interactive articles too with BluePrint interviews so that those who are reading them can use their own creativity to start something similar, very clever, but what you are talking about with it all: the articles, the forums, the profiles, the ideas floating about with critiques and suggestions to how to make their ideas better-that is called Open Source. What you are trying to create is an Open Source for Ideas that can, your words here, heal the world. The make it a testament to our better nature, seriously Guru, you are going to have to put a crimp on that type of talk if you are going to get anywhere in the 'business' side."

"You listen to me."

"Well. Err."

"That is the old selfish paradigm that doesn't want to listen. With Ecological shifts to the environment there is death. Print killed memory in its pre-print form. I am trying, seriously, to kill this old paradigm in its current manifestation. I think they will listen now because we have the tools to change that paradigm. They didn't want to listen before because they had nothing to cling too if they did, today, in our modern technological age born of this selfish paradigm which now strangely can change the underlying value system that bore it, it is possible to think that way and have something solid to cling too. That is why you are listening to me, that is why you say it is possible, because it is. It is free to be a Realistic Optimist. These times come rarely and are short in duration: in the selfish paradigm this is the dot com boom, the oil boom, etc. But this is a Value boom."

"A value boom? Blueprint interviews? Interactive Articles and Value Evolution? Are you into marketing?"

I laugh.

"If it helps change the world I am. To Change it to our best selves which may not look wholly different but it would feel wholly different." I point across Lake Sammamish that is filled with roaring boats, "imagine if we could look out at that lake and know that most of those people out there are filled with their great ideas to help others and there is a system to get them on their way. Imagine if we knew in the pit of our stomach where our doubt resides now, that they had Others interests if not more so, then at least as equal, to their own."

And we both smiled and he looked over at me and said,

"You might be famous.'

"Only if it helps my friend. Only if it helps."

Be well
G