[Back to my Slashdot Archive]

OK, yeah, the article was cheesy and shallow. Complain all you want about the "not hippies like you expected" jist.

But the question – "Who are the people behind this social movement, and what are they like?" – is a great question to ask. The fact that it may be impossible to answer conclusively doesn't detract from the potential value of the pursuiting an answer.

History will want to know "What happened here to cause this? Who were the men and women who joined in and supported this cause? What were their motivations? How did it fit into their lifes and their livelihoods? What made them different than all the people who did not take up the cause?"

There are some trivial answers to some of these questions, but there are also richer answers. It's all well and good to say "people contribute to OS because they want to give back", but that, for instance, misses the obvious predicate "and they aren't satisfied with the available cost-ware and its affordances." Our explanations to ourselves often overlook such fundamentals, because we are like fish discussing water.

I fervently hope that more anthropologists, social commentators, and just plain clueful reporters pay close attention to what's happening in the OS movement. This is what "journalism" means: to "journal" – to chronicle – history as it is being made.

This is it. This is history. Come'n get it.
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Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.