Yesterday I had a nice visit from Christopher Lydon and learned more about his vision for “open source” in the broadcasting sphere. It’s kind of strange meeting someone that you’ve heard for years on the radio. So far away from you … and suddenly so close and right in front of you. Christopher and I have a strong overlapping interest in the concept of “open source” — which is a concept that can seem a bit foreign but let me explain.

In the old days you could fix your own car. You’d pop open the hood and look inside. It would make sense from a mechanical perspective. If you weren’t afraid of getting your hands dirty and had the right set of tools, anything was possible. Cars were “open source” — the owner could go in and fix/modify it to their own specifications and desires. At the least, the owner would understand how the car worked. Understanding is a powerful thing. It is the basis of insight and also foresight.

Christopher’s interest is in an “open source” concept of radio where participants all over the world own its ongoing construction; in the same way my hope for RISD is that it is an “open source” institution where RISD constituents can do the same. Open-ness comes from knowledge how something works … which is never an easy thing as learning takes time. Also even when a complex system is fully open, it might be meaningless to know how it works because it’s close to impossible for a single person to understand by themselves.

For instance today my computer was not working entirely well. So I opened it up to see if I could fix it. The problem was a superficial one, and thus I could address it. If the problem were much deeper, say within the circuit board or in the actual software code it would have been close to impossible to fix it. Were I to have all the knowledge in the world about how the exact model of my computer works and all the necessary tools, I could possibly fix it. But would that be a good use of my time?

I leave this general line of thinking as an open question.