Perhaps Vaidhyanathan and I just got off on the wrong foot.  I might have felt better about him if I read his post on the Chronicle of Higher Education Blog.  But, I read the Social Media Reader chapter first, so I didn’t think much of him.  We made up in the end though.

Open source is not the way we have always worked.  From Socrates complaint that writing would undermine his proprietary knowledge, through trade guilds of the Middle Ages, to the resistance of the Catholic church to printing the Bible in the vulgate, humans have sought to guard and horde knowledge.  Teaching slaves or wo

Open Source for Blacksmiths. Now it’s a Jack Hammer.

men to read was dangerous.  They might think for themselves or want to vote.  Knowledge, and more importantly, control of its dissemination has been a basis for power throughout human history.  So don’t give me any techno-hippie garbage about free love and source code being the natural state of man.

I absolutely agree that copyrights and proprietary restrictions squash creativity and potential.  On the other hand, they enable creativity and potential for others.  Overwhelmingly, most people who use computers today do not engage in basic programing.  They want a word processor with spell check, an easy way to post and view cat videos, and a simple and fairly reliable connection to other people and information.  Vaidhyanathan is correct when he distinguishes between software and music or literature; it is not an expression.  What he fails to see is that software is simply a tool for most of us.  It’s a way to do other things.  Like most of the tools in my blacksmith shop, I want them to work without thinking much about it.  There probably is a better design for a particular hammer or saw, and if someone wants to spend their time thinking about it, more power to them, but that’s not me.  The same is true for software.  People are willing to accept just pretty good programs if they have wide compatibility, ease of use, and dependable customer support.  Linux is a great operating system that you can adapt for various uses and you can depend on it to be stable, but you can’t run most programs on it and I couldn’t watch Netflix with it, so to Hell with it.  I will spend the money to get Windows 7, because I am not just paying for a program to run my computer, I am paying for familiarity with the product, compatibility with other computers and software, and a 24/7 hotline for customer service.  Sure with open source software, I could fix the clitches myself, provided I learn the programing language. Software is kind of like pharmaceuticals.  Lifting copyrights and proprietary restrictions would result in low cost production of medication that could save millions.  But then how would we pay for the years of development and clinical trials?  Without those copyrights, many drugs would never be developed.  Please don’t get me wrong.  Micro-Soft and big drug companies are creations of the Devil which are fueled as much by the souls of consumers as their dollars.  However, if left in hand of well-intentioned programmers and designers and without corporate investment of time and money, computers would still be as large as a house and run on punch cards, thus making this whole argument moot.It is with similar skepticism that I view MOOCs.  Here, Vaidhyanathan and I are in agreement.  I love the Khan Academy, but it is not the same as attending a class for a semester.  MOOCs will be a great tool for those who seek to learn new skills or acquire knowledge.  I also believe that access to learning should be as wide spread as practically possible.  But I have no fear that my years of study and dollars paid for a PhD will be wasted as millions of people steam forth waving online degrees.