Open Source

The concept of open source is very interesting. I love the idea that information is readily available to use but there is a big issue of trust and whether or not the people creating this free content is reliable. Wikipedia for example hosts millions of posts about anything in the world but it can be edited by anyone so when researching and browsing, you have to acknowledge the lack of substantial proof in the material.

There has to be some sort of system where contributors must have some sort of expertise or a way of controlling the flow of bad content on these open source sites because without it, open source is just an easy accessible medium that exploits our laziness or apathy toward searching for the right answers.

For my J315 class I covered a lecture that an engineering professor from Rice gave about free, open source textbooks on the computer contributed by professors and experts in their fields. Connexions is a site where people can contribute, edit and put together their own course material from information provided by other people. The speaker was very adamant that this was the way of the future because it would cost students less and the ease of gathering information would be prominent.

OVerall I think that open source is the right step for a world based on technology and information if we can manage to discourage bad contributors and create some way to legitimize who contributes.