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Remarks by David Bollier Briefing
seminar for U.S. Senators and Staff,
This is a timely moment to think such thoughts because it is only recently that we have begun to realize how serious this Internet thing really is. Even though the Internet has, technically speaking, been around some 31 years, it really did not become a mass medium until 1995 when the Netscape browser was released. Since then, the explosion of computing, handheld devices, wireless electronics and countless other digital technologies threatens to eclipse Gutenberg's printing press and the wheel as the most important technological innovations in history. It is hard to find many aspects of life on the planet -- politics, business, religion, science, education, community life - that has not been affected in significant ways. As this revolution proceeds, we need to apply Churchill's insight to our own circumstances. What kinds of technologies shall we choose over others? And how will those technologies change us? What will they do to alter our social institutions and our democratic culture? These are the kinds of issues that we want to discuss in today's briefing about open source code software and its educational applications. Open source is not just a compelling genre of technology design. It is equally a strategy for advancing education, science and democracy. Many people believe that technology design is neutral, and that the only thing that matters is how an individual uses a technology. This is true as far as it goes. But if there is one key lesson to be learned from open source software, it is that certain technology foster ertain types of social relationships and values. As a kind of architecture for our personal lives, economy and society, technology orients us - and sometimes shoves us - in certain directions. If Churchill is right that our dwellings shape us, how then will the architectures of the Internet, computers and software shape us? I am here today because I believe that open source software fosters a certain class of values that are of critical importance to our educational system, the free market system, scientific inquiry and democratic culture itself. Broadly speaking, open source helps foster openness, a robust exchange of ideas, cooperation and accountability in the arenas in which it operates. Why? Because open source software cannot really flourish unless these social conditions and values are present. We have a number of speakers today who can elaborate on these themes as they affect K-12 education. Our first speaker will be Paul Jones, Professor of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Paul will give us a general overview of transparent technologies - their history, their role in building the Internet and their social and educational importance. Paul will be followed by two classroom teachers who have had extensive, firsthand experience in using open source software with students -- Paul Nelson, a classroom teacher at the Riverdale School in Portland, Oregon, and Jeff Elkner, a classroom teacher at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. Paul and Jeff will explain how open source gives students a fantastic learning experience that simply is not possible using conventional proprietary software. After hearing from these two teachers, we will hear from Bruce Goldberg, the founder of Co-nect, a professional services organization that helps schools integrate technology into the process of teaching and learning. Bruce will discuss the relationship between education reform and the promise of transparent technology. In particular, he will focus on how transparent technology helps assure competitive pricing and innovation in the educational marketplace, while enabling flexibility and accountability. Finally, Bob Young, President and CEO of Red Hat Software will host a question-and-answer session after we've heard from all of our speakers. This will be followed immediately by a reception with a number of Senators. Before introducing today's speakers, I'd like to give a brief overview of transparent technologies in general and open source code software in particular. It's important that we have a clear understanding of this class of technologies, their uses and the values they foster. Electronic
Technologies: It has been noted that the new digital technologies, especially the Internet, are re-wiring the central nervous system of our society. They are enabling entirely novel types of business enterprises, organizational practices and social connections. The ways that markets are structured, the ways that our democracy functions, the kinds of cultural spaces and public conversations that can occur, the very identities we can develop - all of these are being affected by the new electronic technologies. There are obviously many complex forces driving the frenetic changes in the digital world today. But one force that has exerted a clear, almost decisive influence in the growth of the Internet, e-commerce and many derivative developments is transparent technology. What do I mean by "transparent technology"? Simply this: A technology whose development is supported by an architecture of open access, open standards and open communication. This means that anyone who is interested can gain access to the inner blueprints of the technology. In the case of software, the blueprint is known as the source code. Transparency also means that anyone can learn and use the technical standards upon which the technology is based. It means that all relevant technical knowledge can be openly and freely shared with anyone. "Transparent technology" does not refer solely to software, but to any technical system - Internet protocols, cable broadband systems, computer hardware - that allows fair and competitive access to the technological platform. Closed technologies, by contrast, use proprietary designs to set de facto standards that can serve to thwart competition, innovation and accountability. The idea of transparent technology - that all aspects of its design and technical detail should be available to anyone, and not kept under tight wraps as a trade secret - may sound radical. Yet this is precisely what has made the Internet such a explosive force for innovation, information exchange, entrepreneurialism and economic development. The Internet is based on an utterly open architecture. It uses open transmission protocols - the so-called TCP/IP standards. These protocols are what makes it possible to have a universal interoperability among computer networks spanning the globe. It is what enables such a radical interconnectivity among people, which of course is the essence of the Internet's power. Computer users from Australia to France to Zambia can communicate on a shared information commons because there are no artificial technological or proprietary barriers preventing interconnection. The Internet has shown such incredible growth not just because of open protocols that allow end-to-end interconnectivity, but also because of public-domain software. Most of the Internet's basic software systems can be used by anyone for free; there is no single company or consortium of companies that owns the core operating programs to the exclusion of others. For example, Sendmail, an email software, now runs 75 percent of the mail on the Internet. Apache, another open source code software program, currently runs 63 percent of all web sites. BIND is the software that runs domain name servers. Perl is a popular scripting language used for many Internet applications. These open source programs are popular because they are utterly reliable in mission-critical functions. They aren't buggy. They're highly stable and crash-resistant. Moreover, they're much cheaper than most proprietary software licenses or even free. You may recall that enterprises such as Prodigy and CompuServe tried to create their own proprietary "walled gardens" of online users in the 1980s and 1990s. Only paying subscribers could connect with each other, and outsiders were excluded from the strictly regulated, proprietary community. Imagine the surprise of Prodigy and CompuServe executives when a totally open technology, the Internet, ambushed them in the 1990s and blew past their proprietary business models. This is one of many examples of the power of openness. It may be counter-intuitive, but then, so are many phenomena in a globally networked environment. Only now are we beginning to realize, for example, that the networking of huge numbers of people through a supple, inexpensive, decentralized and open communications infrastructure quickly creates enormous surplus value. Many of the traditional economic models simply cannot comprehend the socially based economic value that Internet networking helps generate. Ten years ago no one in the technology community would have dared believe that something as complex as a computer operating system could possibly be created by tens of thousands of volunteer programmers dispersed across the globe, let alone grow into a world-class operating system used on 36 percent of the world's servers. Yet that's exactly what happened. When Linus Torvalds' Linux operating system was joined with the GNU software components developed by Richard Stallman, a phenomenal new operating system emerged out of nowhere in the mid-1990s. Its growth over the past year now exceeds the growth of all other operating systems combined! There is a counter-intuitive lesson here that must be underscored: Technology flourishes best when it is supported by an architecture of open access, open standards and open communications. There will always be a place for proprietary hardware and software, of course. Transparent technologies will not put proprietary companies out of business. What they will do is establish a more open, competitive platform on which value-added competition can occur. When the technology is transparent, useful new innovations can more readily develop and expand. It becomes more difficult for companies to sustain anticompetitive technology "lock-ins" and manipulations of the marketplace. Quality can rise to the top. In an open source environment, for example, it becomes virtually impossible for software makers to erect artificial barriers to competition. Tactics such as marketing ploys, the bundling of different software into a single package, exclusionary licensing deals with computer makers, and other such attempts to "game" the market simply won't work. At a time when all of us want robust competition and innovation - but are skeptical about the effectiveness of antitrust litigation to foster them - transparent technologies offer a neat, self-enforcing solution. Transparent Technology in Education It may not seem readily apparent how transparent technology has anything to do with learning and education. Why should the ability to access the source code of software matter to teachers and schools? What does the open architecture of the Internet have to do with the K-12 system? It is certainly true that students can use off-the-shelf proprietary software to learn all sorts of subjects. But such convenience often comes at a stiff price. Conventional proprietary software has many built-in limitations and long-term costs when compared to open source software. Imagine buying a car that has its hood welded shut. That essentially describes proprietary software. When it's running fine, the car may take you where you want to go. But if it breaks down, or if you want to go somewhere else, or if you want to adapt it for your particular driving style, there's not much you can do about it. Neither you nor a computer repairman can open the hood and fix what's wrong. You can't replace flawed or poorly designed parts. You can't add turbo-chargers to give it extra power. The basic problem with conventional software is that you really can't even learn about how the software works because its source code - the core sequence of programming commands that runs it - cannot be accessed. It's a closely guarded trade secret. A student who can't "touch" the source code by herself - by seeing its design structure, manipulating it, fixing its bugs, and so forth - will never learn much about how software really works. Unable to get their hands on the code, students are much less likely to develop a deeper understanding of software design. They can't develop the skills to program and innovate on their own. They can't incorporate new software features into software programs. In essence, proprietary software encourages students to be passive consumers, not active learners. It forces students into a take-it-or-leave-it relationship with their software, not a change-it-to-make-it-better-and-responsive type of relationship. At a time when the software industry is suffering a serious shortage of programmers - a fact with great consequence for the economy and immigration policy - this is the last thing we need. Beyond hindering learning about software design, proprietary software imposes other significant limitations on educators and students - namely, higher prices, less reliability, no ability to customize software, and no ability to generate and share valuable innovations. Open source software is free. When purchased from vendors who also provide technical support and service, the software is relatively inexpensive. Educators can use open source software to turn computers considered "old" and "slow" into high-end workstations for as little as $300 apiece. In a moment, we'll hear how Paul Nelson achieved this feat in his high school. For institutional users of proprietary software, maintenance and upgrades are major ongoing expenses. Open source software dramatically reduces these costs. How? First, because open source doesn't crash as frequently. It's much more stable than many proprietary software programs, and therefore requires fewer costly interventions to keep it running smoothly. Open source is more stable because a worldwide community of thousands of users makes a point of identifying software bugs and quickly sharing solutions with each other. These improvements are constantly being incorporated into the software. A more stable operating system helps school systems avoid expensive service contracts and telephone calls to Technical Support. There's a second reason that open source saves money - it's a shared community resource. Because open source software "belongs" to the community of users - in the manner of a cooperative - upgrades and technical advice can be had for free. There is no giddy, endless cycle of planning obsolescence and expensive upgrades. Needless to say, this is no little advantage for budget-minded school systems and nonprofits. Furthermore, because open source has a modular design, upgrades can be made on an as-needed basis - and not just when the company finally gets around to fixing to well-known bugs or when it decides that it's in its competitive interest to offer new bells-and-whistles. In the short term, open source operating systems such as Linux do entail some disadvantages. For example, because of the relatively small user base compared to Windows, there are not as many software applications that can run on Linux. But this is rapidly changing. Some of the biggest names in computing - IBM, Sun, Compaq and others - have joined together to develop and promote the so-called Gnome desktop environment - a set of common applications such as word-processing, email and so forth. And many entrepreneurial companies are developing new business models based on open source software. Skeptics may wonder how a small, fairly obscure genre of "free" software can be taken seriously. But what really matters is not the size, but the surge. Open source software, particularly Linux, is growing at a phenomenal clip. As more schools adopt open source, its benefits will correspondingly grow. Transparent Technologies and Democratic Culture Before getting to our speakers, let me just touch briefly on the implications of open source software for government, open markets and democratic culture. I believe that transparent technologies are a positive, invigorating force in the marketplace and in our society because they enshrine the principle of openness. This is important because increasingly, the very design principles of software, hardware and the Internet have political and cultural implications. For example, when Intel built a new computer chip with a unique identifier number, many people protested the new forms of electronic snooping that it might allow. Very political. Closed, proprietary systems for high-speed Internet access can be used to exclude competing content providers, thereby dictating the scope of free expression. That's political. The use of Internet software filters in public libraries has political implications. So does the use of software technologies that allow marketers to collect highly personal data from visitors to websites. My point is not to take sides on any of these issues, but simply to point out that as new digital technologies become the new central nervous system of our economy and society, it matters a great deal whether the technology is transparent or not. Transparent technologies fortify democratic values because the embedded "political choices" are open to public scrutiny. We can see if their technical designs work to thwart competition….or if they censor certain forms of expression….or if they hinder new innovations….or if they enable invasions of privacy. Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig has explored these themes in his seminal book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, which I highly recommend to you all. As Professor Larry Lessig has put it, open source software "functions as a kind of Freedom of Information Act for network regulation. As with ordinary law, open code requires that lawmaking be public, and thus that lawmaking be transparent. In a sense that George Soros ought to understand, open code is a foundation to an open society." Bottom line? Transparent technology is far more than a tool for accomplishing a task. It is a political and cultural force as well. It can be a tool whose very design tends to foster Jeffersonian values in our democratic culture - openness, free exchange of information, innovation, accountability. The issues raised by technology design - transparency or opaqueness -- are much more than technical and practical. Ultimately, they are also about values and what kind of society we want to build. "We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us," said Churchill. As policymakers in Washington, state governments and local school boards face pivotal technology choices, they need to pay special attention to the values implicit in the technologies. In due time, there is no doubt that the new electronic "architectures" will shape us - profoundly. We do have choices. We need to make them very carefully. | ||