The Open Collaboration Revolution

For centuries, the life of the author, inventor or researcher has largely been solitary rather than collaborative. Just another one of those cases where the Internet really is changing everything.

The full potential of the Internet to act as a platform for the sharing of content and information is only beginning to be explored. Many are embracing that potential, using creative tools such as Creative Commons and open source licenses. Others would circle the wagons to prevent their content from being more widely reused than in the past. It may ...

Until the advent of the Internet, the acquisition of knowledge was a slow and linear process of discovery/review/publish/read and start the cycle once again. The legal system that evolved to support that process ranked the rights of creators over users, because society lost little in the bargain. Today, the Internet has upset that equation, and creators of ...

A new non-profit called the Digital Rights Organization has been founded to promote "free and open standards." Its first public act was to issue a declaration calling on governments everywhere to protect the standards upon which our human rights depend.

Standards are the bullies of the design world, always telling every other part of a plan what it has to do. But everyone has a boss, and even standards sometimes have to kowtow to an Alpha Standard.