So, I’ve been asked to speak for a half an hour at CRIM this thursday at 6pm about Open.touchbasic.com
in relation to open source. I’ve begun sketching out my notes to see what they look like, and to be able to pass them along to Elran so he can help me fill in some more details about the techi-er theory and rational behind the stages of Open’s development.

I’m going to resist the urge to keep fleshing these notes out into full paragraphs (ghhn- that expression “to flesh out” makes me cringe. just thought i’d let you know. i always picture a cheese grater and…well. you know.) I just want to speak comfortably when I’m there, not end up being able to give in to my nervousness and reading. Another way I’m going to set myself up to be interesting and fun to listen to is, rather then dressing business professional, I’m going to dress like myself. Read- cowboyboots and a mini-ish skirt. call me geek-bait, baby, i don’t mind.

Here’s those notes…

- Open Journal: just 1 year old.

- founded with the intention of opening up knowledge construction in the MA in Media at Concordia.

-because of the response to the ideas and to the hybrid perspective it became an ongoing project,

-as well as a practical exploration of the open source theories of communication and organization I was exploring in my thesis.

- Media theory so often seems to come down to the question of balancing out against one-sidedness in communication. And the open source process seemed to have evolved attitudes and mechanisms that were successful in the creation of really complex new knowledge.

Because they were able to sit on both sides of a traditional problem- the contradiction between opening yourself up to change and protecting yourself against distortion (bad change):

1. by opening up the source code you create a rigorous environment where assumptions and biases which are built into the construction of software (or any organizational structure) can be seen by other eyes. Other perspectives.

2. by protecting to right to fork the development of open source software (literally forking the group) the original idea can be protected against distortion; or better or complementary versions of ideas can be allowed to emerge out of the new group.

Open source code creates a fundamental twist in traditional ideas about competition. It creates a wider understanding of the difficult process of collaboration on complex ideas, and these were principles I wanted to see explored in academic knowledge construction.

Open Journal aims to open up for discussion cultural codes and processes, and to expose media theories complex architecture of good ideas and biases to the challenging waters of open discussion.

1. we wanted an academic journal with a much wider idea about where media theory could come from. We wanted to include photography, drawing, poetry, and fiction along with articles and essays, and we wanted to publish these in a space where readers could expand and critique them.

Because of this desire we’ve moved increasingly toward blogging softwares and tools-
bc blogging was evolving at this same time into a democratic, open environment and developing tools and plugins that often met our needs.
Then we added phpbb. In both cases we use the software a little differently. The comments on wordpress are more like footnotes or diverging arguments and the posts in the forum make it more like an expanding catalog of notes and observations which can be expanded upon and drawn onto the front page of Open.

We also wanted the forums to be a resource for other projects and collectives. Instead of having their own whole forum they were welcome, if they liked, to have a branch in ours. The benefit of this, besides not having to worry about the technology, was that they could open themselves up to other audiences and could insert themselves into other debates or projects. Open is interested in the fact that most people have a surprising array of interests and abilities. Humans aren’t machines designed with one purpose, we are endlessly creative and changing.

Software- like all media- can either be another layer of rigid structures telling us who we are and what we should think and how tasks should be completed, or it can be something else. OPen source is the field for the creation of that something else over time, and on Open Journal we’re exploring the theoretical potential in that.