Gaming Addiction

Games are great. When the mood strikes, I thoroughly enjoy a good video gaming session. I look forward to the day when I have children and I can play games with them. When that does happen, it will be important for me to set rules as to what games are acceptable, and how long they can be played. I feel that moderation will be important in helping my children not become addicted to gaming.

There Goes Everybody

The book "Here Comes Everybody" has some interesting concepts, but my favorite one dealt with the imbalance of participation. Shirky states that with technologies like phones, internet, and social medias, people are more free to say and do things with so many more people. This freedom gives anyone the tools to contribute equally in a given project, but not everyone participates equally. An example is given that over 3,000 Mermaid Parade photos were posted on Flickr by about 118 different people, but 10% of the people contributed more than 50% of the photos. The most active photographer took about twice as many as the next most active photographer, and the 3rd only half as many as the 2nd.
It might seem like this type of contribution would be harmful to large social systems, but it actually helps drive them. Apparently only a very small percentage of wikipedia users ever contribute, but that is enough to create value for millions and millions of users. I find it interesting that in many social systems, this creates a type of hierarchy based on pure performance, as opposed to a workplace situation where leaders are chosen on how long they've worked there (in general). Open source projects gain leaders through the most active contributors, and I think this is a great thing, because they are naturally the most qualified to be leading such efforts.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

In 1997, Eric Raymond wrote an essay titled, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". In this essay, he speaks of two different types of software development models, the cathedral model where source code is available upon release of each new version, and the bazaar model where the code is developed over the internet in public view. I can see that there are pros and cons to each, but the bazaar model makes a lot of sense to me. With tools like Github and Bitbucket, it is easy to fix or enhance a public repository of code, and then ask the owners if they'd like to incorporate the changes through a pull request. I am partial towards the bazaar method because I have been a part of this process a few times, and it is fulfilling to contribute my knowledge and skills towards software that many people use. Raymond also makes a good point that, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Since all the code is in public view, anyone can look it over, check for bugs, and perform quality assurance. These are the types of things that make the bazaar model awesome in my eyes.

Open-Free-Share-Source-Ware

I recently watched Revolution OS, a documentary about the origin story of open source software and things like GNU, unix, and linux. One of the themes of the documentary was the difference between Open Source and Free Software. Richard Stallman, the creator of the GNU project, and the originator of the free software movement explains that free here is like "free speech", not "free beer". Anyone has the freedom to study, maintain, change, distribute as they please. I found this idea extremely interesting compared to people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who were on the absolute other side of the spectrum, monetizing software as quickly and effectively as possible. I don't personally think there is a "good" and a "bad" model, but that both are necessary for their different purposes. That being said, I'll normally go through the occasional headache of open source/free software than pay for something that I don't have much money for.