Openness May Be New Gold-standard for Government, Business, Technology

Hyper-convergence paradigm, Intellectual Property Preserve, Quipu Economic Forum ::

The open-source movement has been a revolutionary phenomenon of startling proportions. It has changed the way software works for us in our daily experience, by bringing costs down far enough that now anyone with an internet connection can launch a web-based publication in literally seconds. Its efficiency, its appeal, its human element, make it a standard to watch as other sectors of economics and public life evolve to integrate the latest communications technologies, and aim for optimum end-user freedom and flexibility.

What has worked in software development may work as well in business and in government. Historically, industrial development, national security, intelligence gathering, and long-term strategy have been thought to benefit from being kept under lock and key, surrounded by a bank of armed guards and armored exterior walls, both literally and figuratively. But now we are seeing that openness has a tremendous long-term health effect.

So, openness should be considered as a way of mobilizing the voluntary talent of millions of interested and free-thinking individuals, but also as a means of creating a common interest, in defense of which a community of free-thinking, and free-acting individuals self-organize to prevent breakdown. This is, in some ways, an integral part of the revolutionary vision for a democratic society that the United States was founded on, and it is, in the spirit of the early 21st century, a source of promise and renewal in the future of human society.

Markets like openness. Though those who sit atop them often like to see things work specifically and consistently to their own advantage. Consumers like openness. It allows them access to information, which empowers them, and which dignifies their role in the economic fabric. Firms that produce products accompanied by honest information, and/or by a willingness to take responsibility for problems related to their products, tend to build a loyal customer base.

Governments that allow citizen participation tend to find community activism is more productive, less antagonistic, and that the political system itself remains more stable. The more direct involvement people have in the decisions that affect them, the more likely they are to feel they have a role to play, and they will contribute what they can and care about the outcome. This has a positive effect on the efficiency with which a society can adapt to major challenges, on the micro- or the macrocosmic scale.

It is already true that nations with more open media systems and more open forms of government have shown themselves to be more dynamic in social and political terms and more able to adjust to changes in political, social and economic climate, without suffering disintegration or collapse. Open systems are more natural, and more resilient in the face of threats.

“Globalization” is in part based on this phenomenon, in the hopes that opening economic borders will have a dynamic and stabilizing effect, over the long term. A very serious problem, however, with the current state of globalized trade is that it relies heavily on the idiosyncrasies of markets where the political system is corrupt, closed or highly-manipulated, creating great potential for human rights abuse or economic oppression.

The system of forced opening of borders is haunted by its actual lack of openness or citizen-involvement. Development initiatives that consider the real interests of “stakeholders”, local or foreign, are more able to adjust to the real facts of human existence, and therefore are more relevant and more sustainable. That dynamism comes from listening to the voices of those affected, and that involvement is about the openness of a process or a system.

We are likely to see, in coming decades, a far greater reliance on the productive capabilities of such open systems, be they a commons of intellectual property and innovation, a stake-holder-based approach to development, an ecologically-informed approach to economics, or the democratization of nations and regions, in the interests of long-term human wellbeing and sustainability.

Joseph Eugene Robertson @ May 8, 2008