Eric Leach's Weblog

Cultural Lag, Open Source, and the power of community

If you believe the theorists and pundits, it takes a human society about one hundred years to catch up with significant technological advances - you know, things like the plow, the stirruped saddle, the balloon tire, electric lights, and iPods. Which means that most of us are stranded somewhere on the historical ebb and flow between agrarian society and the "super information highway". I think I'm personally stuck on history's timeline just to the right of the bicycle (which incidentally has not changed its fundamental design or characterizing features in over 100 years - don't believe me? check out the brilliant full suspension designs from the 1880s and 1890s in Pryor Dodge's excellent book The Bicycle).

Where am I going with all this? I think its safe to say that things are evolving, uh, rapidly these days. The pace and breadth at which change is distributed is unprecedented - hah, global even. But within this staggering pace of innovation, technologies continue to commoditize. Why is this? One reason is because we continue to emphasize the value of technology based on features and functionality. Except, this isn't the real value provided by technology. Technology is valuable because it changes the way we interact, improves our understanding of one another, creates a bridge between what is merely passable and what is interesting and innovative.

I recently read Joe Trippi's book The Revolution Will Not be Televised, his account of transforming presidential politics using the Internet, blogs, and the power of social networking. The message was simple - even when the features and functions of your product are compelling, there is nothing more valuable than a vibrant and dedicated community.

The software industry is undergoing a similar change - value is emerging through participation, innovation, and the development of communities, not the development of features. If you have ten products, all the same, the one with the biggest or strongest community is clearly the one that will emerge above the rest. This is why open source is the preeminent transformational force in the software industry today. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the industry has realized it is undergoing such drastic changes. (Ah, I knew we'd make it back to cultural lag eventually.)

The really important fact is that people are empowered by involvement, participation, and the sense of satisfaction engendered by contribution. This is an old feeling, an old phenomenon, which gains power and significance when applied in new and interesting ways to new and interesting problems. Like software.

It's not a trend, it's a movement. (Listen to me, full of the enthusiasm of the newly converted...)

Posted at 09:40PM May 04, 2006 by carlericleach in Open Source  |  Comments[0]