The ethics of open source...

Missmc has been seriously derailed by this flu-like illness.  The saving grace is Missmc's little netbook arrived in the mail today.  Cute cute cute and light as a feather.  I have been sent into the world of Linux and Ubuntu and it does look like a nice place to get lost.  I suspect that the wandering geeky part of my brain will be in residence on this website for the next few weeks.

Part of the open source philosophy is that I might be a useful member of the community.  I am all for using free software, but, part of that bargain is giving back to the community by tweaking the programs.  Alas, Missmc does not code.  I feel an ethical dilemma sitting on my shoulder. I feel like a parasite.  Speaking of parasites, there have been a slew of articles outlining how parasites can modify the behavior of the host.  A fascinating study revealed a correlation between traffic accidents and infection with Toxoplasma.  This link was cited by Alex on MR last week.

Missmc has always toyed with a "there is something in the soil" theory about unrest in the Middle East.  Studies like this make me want to run out and collect some samples for analysis in regions that have a long history of turmoil.  Something in the local soil that gets in humans and makes people fight fight fight.  Anyone want to hire me to overlook a study?  I thought not.

Back to Ubuntu.  Will I, as a parasite, modify my host's behavior?  Possibly.  I can tell them about bugs, and, I've seen a few already.  That is only useful after I make sure they are issues not already known.  And I don't have time for that.  So...where can I send some flowers?

The future looks good or evil

I did spend a good amount of last evening dreaming of my soon to arrive mini-netbook and its Ubuntu operating system.  I am a Mac girl heart and soul, but a bit of Ubuntu is a nice seasoning.  What blogger wouldn't like a bit of Open Source?  After all, it is a philosophical match.  

We are headed toward topics that will shape the future.  And back to the past.  Back in the good old days of mainframe architecture, ideas now being put forth in the "cloud computing" arena are commercial rehashes and remashes of old school ideas.  As a young girl, I was on the BBS - now I am on Facebook. The portion I was utilizing was set up by a major computer company and was purely an internal site.  But large and global.  And shared.  And the content was created by the users.

If one extrapolates some of these structures out of the computing world we do get a flavour of things.  So - whither thou goest?  We are in the appropriation, collage, remix and share phase of civilization.  We've been there quite a while in the cultural arena.  The evolution of this into various parts of our every day lives is quite a neat phenomena.  I've gone from mainframe to pc and have been sent back to something resembling the mainframe.  How social.  

And how economical.  My little netbook is a give-a-way.  Pretty soon, I'd venture to say we'll get them free in cereal boxes.  They will hook into their own little locked homepage upon start-up and run an ad by us before giving us some freedom to roam.  A culture of cereal crazed Wheat-a-Bix fans will develop. That seems more than ok to me.  On the other hand, if McDonalds joined the netbook marketing give-a-way movement then I would have to call the whole thing evil. 

The Enchantress of Numbers...

There is a giant Black Hole at the center of our galaxy the BBC announced today.  What good timing.  Reading on, Dr. Massy said "Although we think of Black Holes as somehow threatening, in the sense that if you get too close to one you are in trouble, they may have had a role in helping galaxies to form - not just our own, but all galaxies"...."They had a role in bringing matter together...

Somehow all this chatter about black holes and bringing matter together brought Missmarketcrash back inside her brain again, to yesterday's mention of the enchanted Ada...

"What about a machine"?  Ada asked with a nervous quiver, one that reflected her naivety. 

"Yes - let's build a most fantastic sort of contraption with input from all types of data from all over the world" she continued breathlessly...."deriviatives trading, housing sales, lending, the equity market, management consultants, anything really".  Let's call the machine umm..."Ada's Box".  As she left the room, Missmarketplace reflected on the notion that Ada was a mathematically-inclined daughter of an Important Poet.   And this Important Poet was scandalous and beautiful on all fronts -- a reckless attitude toward money, promiscuous in all ways...the perfect man to be involved in such a mess...why he even wrote something about well, not really black holes, but darkness... once...

So Ada's Box could be open source free love and could entice bored computer programmers to send in data from wherever it is they are working.  This data could rely on the self-same computer programmers to spot Interesting Things and write more open source programs to spot Interesting Things.  It would not be run by economists, or governments, or companies.  Just a bunch of open-source programmers.

So - would that just inspire chaos?  Would anything reliable come out of it?  Would any company agree to such a thing?  It would have to somehow become anonymous data as soon as it went in, encrypted identities if you'd like.  There would certainly be villains as programmers are naturally inclined in that direction, but, would it actually function reasonably well - a la Wikipedia?  And then, in this black hole of data - high-speed star formations such as enormous growth in various derivatives or other invented things might be seen before they get too large?  Maybe?

Or has Missmarketcrash been fantasizing too much again?