S05E02 of Connection Problem: Whatever happened to Open?

Sitrep: Sitting at Café 9, the little coffee shop and roastery at Kreuzberg's Markthalle IX. It's a crisp and sunny 1C outside. Mild winter at its best.

Today's issue explores the notion of open, as in open web, open access, open source or the open movement.

But first, a big thank you for the conversations and feedback to last week's installment, especially around transitions. 🙏🙌

Also, I'd like to apologize for the many typos (and a whole stray paragraph!) in the last installment. I mostly write these in transit or in a bit of a rush, but that week was sloppy (or rather: non-existing) proof reading. My apologies.

Alright, to it!

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What's been happening

1. Building on last week's early thoughts around a New New Normal, I wrote up some still-early-but-less-early thoughts around living in the New New Normal, the world as dominated by an establishment of formerly disruptive startups that now hold all the power (and all the cash) — and whose power might be draining from Silicon Valley and increasingly pooling in China. The blog post is over on Medium.

2. Adweek published an interview with me that we did on the Trustable Technology Mark launch in December. I haven't read it since it's paywalled; I've been trying to get the author to send me a copy, and also to sign up for the premium subscription. But cancelling that would require a phone call, and frankly I can't be bothered dealing with a call to a call center to cancel a subscription I only would have because I offered my time for an interview. So if you have access to it, I'd be curious, but also, I can't say I endorse or don't endorse the article itself.

3. There are a lot of groups coming through Berlin to learn about the tech scene. Alas, all too often the focus is on startups. (What's the deal with that anyway? Startup isn't the only mode to start an organization, or even a business. It's 2019, people, come on!) So I was super happy that we just got to host a group of security and IT students with an entrepreneurial bent that didn't just visit startups to learn about the open web and trustable tech with input from Mozilla and ThingsCon. I believe that this student group—which was interested and smart only could be improved by a heavy dollop of diversity—got really lucky that their Berlin tech tour got put together by good friend and long time collaborator Simon Höher (who also co-founded ThingsCon with me). Hence they had the chance to get a high pressure round of input on alternative economic models, tech ethics, and the responsibility that comes with being a software developer and entrepreneur. Well done, and I hope they go on to do great things.

4. And last but not least, I was super happy to be invited to an intimate workshop about the State of Open. What a segue!

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If you'd like to work with me in the upcoming months, I have very limited availability but am always happy to have a chat. I'm currently doing the planning for Q2 and Q3 2019.

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Whatever happened to Open?

I was very happy that my good friend and occasional collaborator Alek Tarkowski of Centrum Cyfrowe put together a workshop day on the State of Open: Whatever happened to the utopian idea of open as a guiding principle, a value even? Was this notion corrupted, is it still a worthy goal? Heavy stuff. But what a nice and constructive and respectful group.

I won't do any direct quotes (Chatham House rules), but I wanted to share a few reflections now that I've had a day to let some of these discussions sink in.

Open, around ca. 1995-2005, was considered by a certain tribe on the web (to which I'd count myself, even if I was probably quite on the fringe of it) a worthy goal; an end in itself that would lead to a better society (ish). However, by 2019 this looks very different, naive even. Partially because open has become such a default in some areas (like software) that this fight is somewhat over and won; but more so because platforms like Facebook et al claim to be open because of the way their APIs work that they have muddled the waters (and definitions) so much that the word itself has become somewhat meaningless.

So some participants toyed with the idea to move on from the term open to the term free (as in freedom). To me this would only move the semantic bottleneck, and in a few years time we'd see the same debate again. Also, free just like open has very different connotations depending on where you stand politically, regionally, and culturally. For example, in the US you might claim the right to carry a gun is a necessary requirement of guaranteeing your personal freedom. However, if you're part of a minority or for other reasons fear that gun being pointed your way, you might argue that someone else carrying a gun prohibits you from articulating your opinion in public, hence someone else's freedom to carry a gun effectively restricts your freedom of speech. (I would argue exactly that. But I don't live in the US, so my opinion on this is pretty meaningless.) So freedom: A tricky concept.

So I'd second (and build upon) a notion another participant put forward: ***Open needs to be imbued with values: It's a principle and a way of operating needs to be filled with life. ***Off the cuff I'd say values like equitable, inclusive, diverse, responsible, respectful; but that list would better be developed and deliberated over at some depth.

During our discussion I kept coming back to an unlikely source of inspiration: The German constitution and political system as put together after WWII. There are two aspects there in particular that I think are worth examining in this context:

1. Wehrhafte Demokratie: One of the founding principles of the German parliamentary democracy is that it's a wehrhafte Demokratie, a democracy that is fortified and defends itself. What this means in practice is that democracy cannot be abolished in Germany by any legal means at all. Even if 100% of the democratically elected parliament voted to abolish democracy, it couldn't happen. There's something interesting here about building in safeguards against a governance system undermining itself; against someone hacking the rules to abolish the founding principle.

2. Human dignity comes first: The German constitution open with this:

(1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.

In English: "(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." It's the first article, first sentence.

Putting human dignity first like this is of course a core learning from Germany's violent history; no freedom of speech at the top like in the US, but dignity. This informs the whole constitution and brings us to another, directly related part of the constitution, the extent and limits of a person's freedom (Article 2, first sentence:

(1) Jeder hat das Recht auf die freie Entfaltung seiner Persönlichkeit, soweit er nicht die Rechte anderer verletzt und nicht gegen die verfassungsmäßige Ordnung oder das Sittengesetz verstößt.

Again in English: (1) Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law.

In other words, you can do whatever you want unless you violate someone else's rights.

I think there's something here to start thinking about the way we want to govern the internet, too. But there's no easy formula. It's a messy human solution to a messy human problem. And maybe that's ok.

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I wish you an excellent weekend.

Yours truly,
Peter

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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores the impact of emerging technologies — like Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research, strategy & foresight company. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that fosters the creation of a responsible Internet of Things. In 2018, Peter is a Mozilla Fellow. He tweets at @peterbihr. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.

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Picture: Unsplash (Chris Lee)