wrythings

Why don’t these things work together more easily?

If (for instance) I want to have a wiki and some other CMS on my site, let’s say drupal or wordpress… in terms of site/user experience what functionality might I want? True unified sign-on system with unified session control and maybe unified search on content over the entire site. This seems a reasonable if rigorous set of requirements, and if it were simple to use prominent open source applications together this way we’d see a greatly increased uptake: think social source. (Do check out Peiser’s paper. We’ll take the question of social source further another day.)

What other tools would you like to see able to play together well? If you dig down to the innards of what that means - what do you find? What elements of each application would need to be more modularized?

That’s part of the process I’m calling find the missing APIs.

It would require a different way of looking at your own project, and would ennable a new way of looking at how projects work or could work together, perhaps evolving a practice of strategic roadmapping where we identify and invest in the development of these missing APIs.

Arthur Brock of The Geek Gene, has proposed Sourcetree Commons as an object registry that might make this more likely. It’s still in the early conceptual stage but what is at stake is whether our tools reflect our values and make the work easier.

So much to say! I have been a fan of the Grass Commons vision (not to mention the team) for some time. So much so, I’ve recently joined their Board!

When I first learned of the vision to develop the Network of Integrated Consumer Knowledge - NICK I was stunned. It’s something we clearly need. I thought: how the heck are we going to get there? It takes some chutzpah to even dream this thing, but that is exactly what we need more of. And we do need NICK. Though it looks to be a long-range project, it may be better to think of NICK as establishing a standard and a technology for sharing consumer knowledge. That’s what I like about it. The Open API for Consumer Knowledge.

If that wasn’t cool enough, look at the underlying technology they have evolved in trying to bring this big vision to the world: WagN

They say Wiki + Tagg’n = WagN, and that’s a good mash-up style descriptor. But being a stickler for the evolution of our language and logic in these new worlds I wonder how we will describe it in the future when it is more natural to us…. when we are, let’s say, more fluent in WagN. And I do think we ought to think of these applications in terms of a grammar of what they make possible. We’ll leave that aside for now.

And then there is Hooze.

Hooze?

I don’t know.

Third base.

Abbott & Costello aside, Hooze will help us to know or remember who’s behind a product and that will help us mean what we pay as the Grass Commons saying goes.

My friend Gerry Gleason recently commented:

Now that the peer-produced encyclopedia, Wikipedia, surpasses all but the premier commercial encyclopedia in completeness and quality, and it is arguably the equal to that one (Britannica), I see it as only a matter of time before peer-produced independent media surpasses all the commercial offerings (can anybody name one that might compete, ok maybe in print, the NY Times, but that’s it)?

Gerry’s comment brought forth an echo from my recent visit to the Pantheon (Paris) where there is a statue to Diderot to the effect that the Encyclopedia paved the way for the social revolution…

So, now, the revolution of the Internet and a wiki-mode of participating in knowledge.

I’m excited that Free Geek Chicago was recently launched as a project of NPOTechs and the Logan Square CTC (Community Technology Center).

Check out the website: http://www.freegeekchicago.org/

Description from their website:

FREE GEEK Chicago is a not-for-profit community organization that recycles used technology to provide computers, education, internet access and job skills training to the underserved communities of Chicago in exchange for community service.

FREE GEEK Chicago was founded in August 2005 as a collaboration of NPOTechs and Logan Square CTC to recycle computer technology and provide low and no-cost computing to economically disadvantaged individuals and not-for-profit and social change organizations.

FREE GEEK Chicago does most of this work with volunteers. The volunteers disassemble the donated equipment and test the components, which are either recycled as electronic scrap or recycled into refurbished systems. These refurbished computers are then loaded with Open Source Software, such as GNU/Linux, Open Office, and other Free Software.

We are proud of being a democratically-run organization, and use consensus in our meetings. Our policy decisions are made by a group of volunteers and staff called the council, and those policies are executed by our staff collective.

Anyone can get involved! Donate used equipment… volunteer your time… support a grassroots community organization!