Cold Constructs Blog

I shouldn’t have to remind you of how important communication is to humanity. So why do some people (mainly large groups of them) think they have a right control it? Today it’s like we each buy the right to an island, but there’s no ships going to any other island–you’re stuck there, unable to interact with the rest of the world.

How do we build the ships? Make every form of communication open. This includes all networking protocols (among them, instant messaging and VoIP) and file formats. These are the ships, and if we make them open and free everyone will be able to stay on their island of choice but never be cut off from the rest of the world.

Competition breeds progress, so once these mediums become open they usually only develop when needed. Notice that I didn’t say progress never occurs. Then again, changing it doesn’t require any bureaucratic oversight (if done right), so any individual capable and willing to improve the medium is completely free to do so. After short periods of testing and simulation, the change will be distributed automatically if it passes.

All internet protcols must be completely open if we want everyone and everything to join the party, and that is indeed what we want. It’s like the benefits of a democracy without with bloodshed: a vastly diverse population that will spawn incredible content and innovations because no one is holding them back for the sake of order.

The documents we use to communicate with must be open so that everyone will be able to trade with each other because no one will be locked into a content-creation program controlled by a single corporate entity.

If the content and channels we use to communicate are open, it won’t matter what OS people are running. Every OS will be able to incorporate all communication mediums into their system because they’re open. This allows competition to remain within the area we most desperately need innovation in–interface design. No matter what interface you’re using, you’ll still be able to talk to the world because the communication mediums will be open.

But why stop there?

Why not create an open metaverse? Second Life seems interesting enough, but you can’t use your own tools to create content and the whole thing is controlled by a for-profit company. Think how rich an open metaverse would be. If anyone could contribute to it (because they could use whatever tools they want), a universe as rich as the world would form, only the metaverse will have no limits. Companies can sell assests on it using real money (no fake “Linden” or shit like that, just a direct tie-in with existing economies). If they want to blow people away so that they’ll buy their stuff, they could hire some programmers to extend the codebase. Not only would this give them a huge boost in publicity for improving the metaverse but it would benefit everyone using the system.

The metaverse would be a place where people can interact visually, trade, network, build reputations for the real world, and play god if they wanted to (and who doesn’t).

Naturally some small group of people will have to build the framework first. But what about opening the mediums? It will take a new generation of producers to accomplish this. Once the old generation dies, their ways of doing business will follow them to the grave. Don’t let any opportunity slip past you that would get us that much closer to open sailing. But waiting for the old fools to die won’t suffice. We have to tread our own paths and set our own standards. In fact, we don’t have to wait–there are already a number of movements that are striving for this goal. OpenDocument, Jabber, FreeNet, and others are taking the initiative, but they can’t make it alone. Join their projects, donate, contribute anything you can, spread the word, get the meme out there.

Let everyone know how we can make our world less shitty, in fact improve it. The only thing that would suffer is our own greed.