[FRIAM] Globalism in the age of populism? .. & Open Source Software

[┣glen┫]

Heh, your juxtaposition and question are ill-formed, which is why I tried to reach some clarity on what that article in the OP meant.

Open source is at least in part a political movement with its own conception of "elites", spawning the various license types and long-running legal battles.  To consider any sort of globalist implications solely from the myopic tools and tools communities mentality isn't useful.  That would be like assuming the existence of worldwide sports like soccer or the Olympics will obviate war.

Open source (and data and the larger "openly sourced" information) are just as susceptible to provincialism as democracies.  And the mechanisms are the same, inflammatory accusations based on ill-defined classification systems (including the ones Marcus mentions about "munitions").  I've argued here on the list that with some open source tools, it literally does not matter whether they are open source or not because only a tiny handful of people on the planet are capable of reading them.  E.g. cryptographic software used to be more "elite" than it is today.  But it's still pretty obscure.  And these elites stay elite (through their own work, social privilege, and gene-given attributes) because tech advances.

You, Owen, are so extraordinarily privileged that you may not adequately realize the extent of it.  Yes, for people like you, with your intellect, your hard work, etc., you will never be at risk for back-sliding into provincialism.  Even if/when the US slides into a dark age, you can simply leave or get a job with the new dictator divining truth from the stars.  But what about the huge swaths of us that live under things like poverty or opiate addiction?  (Just to be clear, I'm in the same boat ... at least until I get brain damage from a motorcycle crash or my cancer transforms into a more aggressive kind.)

We are global because we are elite.  Just because we will be able to except ourselves from much of the back slide doesn't mean it can't happen.  And the more vulnerable amongst us elite will definitely "go back".


On 01/30/2017 07:32 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Does anyone have an opinion on the OP:
>   Globalism in the age of populism? .. & Open Source Software
> 
> .. which really is about that it's too late for populism, nationalism, isolationism to overcome what is already around us? We are far more global than we think we are. 
> 
> ​How many of us are bilingual at least? Look at your "digital day" and ask yourself just how, in so many ways, you've gone past ever going back.
> 
> My original example surprised me when I discovered just how many global, non-US dominant open source software movements I'm involved in. My interest was in how many similar cases of globalism occur outside of my domain.
> 
> So even though there are 10 (OP) huge forces against globalism, they simply cannot overcome where we are, we're past the tipping point. Certainly in software.
> 
> And you?


-- 
␦glen?