Open Source Models
[via Anish] Jeffrey Phillips writes:
The web paradigm is changing the way we think about work. Now I can work from anywhere, with anyone through web-based collaboration. The web paradigm should also change the way we compute and use data, systems and information, and bend these to our way of working, rather than us continually working to the computer’s existing shortcomings. Right now, the computer and the network and the software it contains is an idiot box. I do as much for it as it does for me.
Where did we go wrong? We introduced a product that was good at doing one task (computation) very quickly into a situation (the knowledge based office) that does many things once. So the power of computing, especially given the massive computing power available to most of us, is never used, and the real requirements we have in the way we work are not ones the computer was originally intended to support.
What can we do to change this? Look to the open source software models. That’s where change is likely to occur. Microsoft Office and the large transactional packages we use to run our businesses don’t really help knowledge workers with their requirements. That’s why blogs, wikis, tagging and other concepts and functions from the open source and web world are so intriguing right now to many knowledge workers.