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Two Ways of Looking at a Network
There are more than two, of course, but let's start with two.
A computer network can look like a collection of stand-alone machines, just as a community of humans can look like a collection of individuals. It depends on the point of view from which you describe the system, whether you see individuals or the network, the parts or the whole. Without individuals, nothing gets done, but without networks, nothing endures. Networks organize and store information so it lasts longer than individual lives.
All high-level systems, from business systems to religious systems, store and transmit symbols. Some are preserved through rituals, some through narratives or records, some through one-on-one teaching. We preserve symbolic knowledge so it can be there like ripening fruit, so when we're hungry, we can eat it. Even symbols that have become stale or flat through habitual use can surprise us with visions of possibility beyond anything we imagined when we are hungry for what they disclose.
As individuals, we are always motivated by self-interest, but we can be gathered into systems that factor in that self-interest and go beyond it. Religious systems, for example, do not collect people who are "good;" they collect ordinary individuals who need a training program to become more fully human beings. They turn self-interest into mutual self-interest, transforming our possibilities for meaningful action in the process.
I was talking recently with Steve Straus, a personal performance coach, about "the new economy" and "giving it away" instead of selling it, but we weren't just talking about turning a commodity into a loss leader. We were talking about how things fundamentally work.
"It reminds me of the saying," I said, "give and it will be given to you. The more you contribute, the more you experience a feedback loop of amplified value."
My statement presupposed that there is "something" to give, that I can "own" whatever it is that is given away. As if what we give when we contribute to others in a dynamic system is a "thing" to possess. That's the way things look when we think "we" are individuals, bounded by parameters, when what we see when we look into a mirror is an edge, a boundary, a separateness.
"It's deeper than that," Strauss said.
I don't remember his exact words, but I think he said something like this:
When we participate in something larger than ourselves, we experience a more complex truth ... that the network really is the computer, that humans really are like cells in a single body. That, as Marvin Minsky said, a person alone (like a desktop computer unplugged from the network) is nearly useless, a brain in a bottle. A person who isn't connected to the information and power flowing in a network is like an abandoned infant raised by wolves in a cave, unable to speak the dialect of the tribe. The network is where humanity thinks.
So this is about more than managers morphing into coaches or organizational structures flattening into branches on taller fractal trees. It's as if we are staring at ourselves in that mirror, when suddenly, instead of seeing a hard-edge shape (created by minds designed to discern a foreground against a background), we see that we are part of a larger system of energy and information, one that's self-similar at all levels. Our edges blur, we see that the center is everywhere, the local focus of everything that exists. We see that the monitors on which we read these words are stems of the leaves that we are on a single tree.
Power in a network is not exercised by dominating or controlling, as it is in a hierarchical structure. Power in a network is exercised by contributing and participating.
Coding in a context of open source software is one sign of this larger truth. When we experience ourselves as part of the flow of energy in a larger system, we want to work like that all the time. We want the satisfaction of participating in something meaningful that's bigger than we are. We want life always to be what we discover it to be in those moments of real knowing.
When we lose ourselves, we find ourselves. That sounds religious, but this is not really about religion. Religion, in fact, is not about religion. It's about what's so. Religious symbol systems, emerging in digital media as they once emerged in speech, then writing, then print, are seeking suitable forms for storing digital symbols so that, when we are ready for their meaning, they will be available to us in ways that fit how electronic networks are teaching us to think and perceive.
Richard Thieme (www.thiemeworks.com) speaks, writes and consults on the human dimension of techology and the work place.
This was a long way of saying a fundamental concept. Sharing ideas/information with others ultimately helps you.
The human race now has thousands of years of accumulated knowledge. From making a fire to making a computer. Somewhere we have all these little bits of information that (virtually) everyone has access to.
And because all of this information is shared, our lives have been much improved over living in caves and hunting and such.
Of course with all the intellectual property laws, sharing can be a bad thing too. Tell and idea - someone else uses it/patents it and makes millions. Ick.
But overall, sharing is a GOOD THING. That's the underlying reason Open Source works.
Danny
If this list of replies is to be as human centric as the essay itself, I will dare to write the following.
In his book On Liberty, John Stuart Mill proposes the idea that no ideas should be censored so that the dialogue of ideas can contain the largest number of voices, and in turn encompass a greater amount of truth. In many ways, closed source software is self-censored software. How are we to know what great innovations (if any) are hidden within the code for Win 98 or NT (release xyz7000)? And more importantly, a point which JSM makes, what errors are there in the microso~ code? Bad programming habits, UI design, etc. that should have been weeded out a decade ago, but prolonged through the tacit nature of closed source.
Such timidity in admitting what exactly is done behind the black box that is a closed source product is exactly what makes the bugs and errors inherent in them so agregious. They could be fixed, if only they were allowed to be seen, discussed, and played with.
That is the beauty of open code software which lures the best coders (and users) to it. At least there is someone to complain to, and chances are, they will respond with something more than a busy signal or a request that you hold on for another ten minutes so that you can pay them $95 dollars for an incident (read bug) that they essentially wrote into their secret code.
-Rich
Check out carnegie, especially if you are in college.
So really the open source community then is similar to the borg. There is a hive mentallity that since you are receiving benefits you should contribute to those and in turn, the community or hive operates better with fewer numbers than a closed community that is in turn less efficient.
-?-
Now then. You can argue that the individual is made "better" with the addition of society -- like, to continue to analogy, a computer is made better with the addition of a network. But to inject meaning into the argument is to take it an entirely different direction, and please don't confuse the two.
As individuals, we are always motivated by self-interest, but we can be gathered into systems that factor in that self-interest and go beyond it. Religious systems, for example, do not collect people who are "good;" they collect ordinary individuals who need a training program to become more fully human beings. They turn self-interest into mutual self-interest, transforming our possibilities for meaningful action in the process.
Well no. Even if you agree with the teachings of any one religion, you stil have to admit that most religious people do not agree with you. So either all or almost all religions are bent on reducing the meaning of lives. A Muslim, for example, would say that Christian lives are meaningless, and vice-versa. If that's not enough of a counter-example, how about suicide cults that take "ordinary" individuals and destroy them? What is the "mutual self-interest" in eating the poison pudding?
Each individual seeks meaning in his or her life, and it is the individual meaning, not the collective meaning, that is important.
Suggesting that individuals have no worth? Fuck that kind of shit. Of course individuals have worth. Each individual perceiving this message is perceiving it in a universe entirely residing within their own brain. Collectively, they add their value to the whole and may -- or may not -- improve the whole, but the meaning of each individual's life is self-determined. You cannot determine my meaning and I cannot determine yours.
We are not like computers, all nearly identical on an identical network. We freely choose how to operate, which networks to join or not join, whether to act collectively or on our own, whether to think or not think. We choose which networks to associate with. We determine our values through our own thoughts. We improve the whole by collecting and concentrating individual efforts, yes, but we can also destroy the whole.
100 million people were killed by their own governments during this century. Were they improved by being a part of their network? Was their network improved? Did they perform the supreme sacrifice by giving their own lives for the world?
As humans, we have the greatest attribute possible: consciousness. Our very self-deterministic nature is what makes us better than apes, dogs, cats, mice, bees or borgs in a hive. The presence of the network does not reduce our consciousness one bit, and it is from that consciousness that meaning arises. And your meaning is, as should be obvious at this point, extremely different from mine.
Here's one last way to look at this problem using the network analogy. If individuals are meaningless without the network, and the addition of everyone into the network is what adds value, how do you explain the addition of AOL, or worse, WebTV? If it sounds like I'm being flippant, it's because I sorta am. But just like a lot of us feel AOL killed Usenet, so people's choice of networks is a part of their own concept of adding meaning. Many networks subtract meaning from my life, and I'm sure you can find similar examples in your life.
Our thoughts have meaning because we think them. Sometimes we add value to the whole because we share them. The whole is meaningless without every individual participating in it, but if we didn't have individual consciousness, the whole would be competely useless. Deathmatch games are only possible with people with NON-SHARED consciousness playing; if they think alike the game is worthless.