2006-01-17
How Geeks Will Inherit the Earth
I've been listening to the Creating Prosperity podcast since late last year. It's a serialized audio book version of "Elegant Technology" by Jonathan Larson.
The first couple of chapters were interesting enough that I checked out the audio book version of Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class" from the local library. And I was able to finish Veblen's book just before Christmas, and had some interesting conversations about it with friends and family after Christmas dinner.
Just after New Year's when I listened to the podcast of Elegant Technology: Chapter Four "The Theory of the Industrial Class". The ideas in this chapter lead me to some very interesting insights into the driving forces behind the Open Source Software and related movements and their likely long term repercussions.
The podcast and an online version of Creating Prosperity are available on the Elegant Technology...online web site. Be warned that the podcast is very dry and will likely put you to sleep, unless you're really interested in the subject matter and know some history of economics.
The first couple of chapters were interesting enough that I checked out the audio book version of Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class" from the local library. And I was able to finish Veblen's book just before Christmas, and had some interesting conversations about it with friends and family after Christmas dinner.
Just after New Year's when I listened to the podcast of Elegant Technology: Chapter Four "The Theory of the Industrial Class". The ideas in this chapter lead me to some very interesting insights into the driving forces behind the Open Source Software and related movements and their likely long term repercussions.
- The "producer class", a.k.a. the geeks, will steadily gain economic and political power by routing around anything or anyone that gets in the way using open source tools and techniques, rather then through direct conflict or political action.
- As more and more technologies become open source, the pace of innovation will increase. Probably geometrically.
- Companies that hold and try to monopolize technology patents will find that open source research develops multiple technologies that render their patents obsolete and valueless.
- Similar open culture processes will happen with content creators and copyrights, because given a choice buyers will choose open content that they can use when, where and how they want, and they're even willing to pay extra for that privilege.
- At some point open innovation and content development will occur faster then patents and copyrights can be enforced by the legal system. When this happens most patents and copyrights will become pointless.
- The current system of intellectual property as incentive to innovation will breakdown and the businesses that depend on it must adapt or die. (Most will go bankrupt trying to defend useless patents and copyrights.)
- Businesses and individuals that facilitate collaboration and the free exchange of information will prosper.
- Mass market industrial manufacturing will rapidly decline and be replaced by global systems of distributed custom manufacturing of openly designed products.
The podcast and an online version of Creating Prosperity are available on the Elegant Technology...online web site. Be warned that the podcast is very dry and will likely put you to sleep, unless you're really interested in the subject matter and know some history of economics.
Comments:
I haven't heard the podcast -- don't even know what a podcast is -- but some four years ago I acquired a printed copy of the book by kind courtesy of the author himself. I had a long air journey in front of me and the usual exciting paperpack crime thriller to get me all the way home to Western Australia, but I started with a peep at the preface to Elegant Technology and was drawn to read on. Decades of floundering with the aid of the crude and misleading nostrums of Marxism and sundry other bum steers fell away as I was held by the most convincing structural analysis of modern society I have even seen. The crime thriller was history. Although I have issues with some details of Elegant Technology I am very much indebted to it for a credible context in which to follow the (often alarming) events of the day.
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