Sharing is Progress
For a short while now I have been undergoing a personal research into ideas of open-source, data sharing and collaboration, and the benefits of these things. I am still learning a lot—trying to better understand them, the motives and the incentives that people can find in them and ultimately… why?—but I do believe that this is the future. Not just in the design world, but in science, art, mathematics, education an so on; I feel through an open-source culture the world will develop into what can one day be called, a mile stone in cultural and social evolution.
It was not my intention to get so heavy, it kind of just happened. The point I had intended to make is that from now on I think I will put my money where my mouth is. From now on I want to share almost everything, namely ideas.
I am victim, as much as every other human, of the human condition and I automatically feel an ownership of anything I feel may be a good idea, and, as with anything else I own and cherish, I want to protect it. But if I am to act on the beliefs stated above, I must start abiding to an egoless design incentive (studying and occasionally working in the design world, I feel it is a reasonable place to start, but in an open-source culture, a designer could, by all means, contribute to other practices). I will, from now on, publish any good* idea I have. I will publish my ideas on a popular social media outlet, such as Tumblr, and the ideas will free free to use by anyone.
*And as I recently found out, it is not possible to copyright an idea.
This will commence this evening. Why, again, am I doing this?
- I may have conceived my own ideas, but who am I to say that I am the best person to act on these ideas?
- As a means of encouraging collaboration and sharing generally.
- As an experiment.
This is a small move on my part, but as I say, I feel I need to put my money ideas where my mouth is.
This was inspired by Unrealised Projects and Michael Nielson’s TED Lecture about Open Science:
…And many more open-source initiatives.
Josh
Josh Murr 
Hmm it looks like your blog ate my first comment (it was super long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I wrote and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying
your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog writer but I’m still new to the whole thing. Do you have any helpful hints for beginner blog writers? I’d definitely appreciate it.
Hi Jed,
Thanks for the kind words! I am an aspiring blog writer too and have little exposure to really writing for an audience. So all that I’ve done here is for myself. So I suppose that’s my advice: write for yourself. Write about things your enthusiastic and thoroughly interested in and it will all come to you. I only write when I have something to write about, otherwise the writing will be sloppy and shallow.
Good luck with it all!
Josh