Can an Apple addict be an advocate for openness?
That's the sobering question I ask myself today. This comes in the wake of challenging students in our Digital Civilization class to be more critical about the open movement (we have been studying
openness in its many exciting varieties this week).
I have found students too easily agreeing with open science, open government, open source software -- as though openness were a self-evident truth that the founding fathers overlooked in the Constitution; as though openness were a techno-utopian condition that only morons or devils would disagree with.
Frankly, some of the advocates for openness play the devil rather well. (I get uneasy when I find myself on the same side as that Anonymous group, even just a little.) When openness becomes a kind of irresponsible liberalism or the toy of anarchists, it starts to lose its shine. And despite my own strong statements in its favor, I must admit that openness can't just be about rapacious publishers too benighted to understand the virtues of open access, or about venal congressmen and MPAA lawyers coming down on life-as-we-know-it-online with ham-fisted censorship legislation. SOPA was wrong; does that make all openness right?
Time for some soul searching. "Okay, Gideon," I asked myself, "where are you truly committed to a closed or restricted system? Where is it that you are most hypocritical when trumpeting openness?"