Beyond the fetish of open โ€“ Open Future

peter.suber's bookmarks 2022-12-09

Summary:

"Openness in technical architectures does not lead automatically to beneficial, progressive social, political and economic structures. Open (access) resources, without dedicated custodians, are prone to degradation or exploitation. Inviting open markets to address some of these issues brings about the problems of commodification. Absent of resilient, mission-, and community-specific governance systems, open social, economic, political networks and communities remain vulnerable to external interference, exploitation, or simple degradation. If openness means the free circulation of ideas, the porousness of community boundaries, the lack of ossified power relations, the fluidity of social, economic, cultural, political norms, structures, flows and processes, then this openness will always be under the threat of being appropriated and abused.

While openness has traditionally been framed as a source of resilience, it has become increasingly clear that open systems, societies and resources can also be extremely vulnerable. So, instead of focusing on openness as a magical solution that works equally well in all possible contexts, we may want to ask ourselves: what do we hope to achieve with openness? What may be the alternatives to openness which would allow us to achieve the same goals in that one specific context? And most importantly, what protections do we need to take to protect open resources from abuse?"

Link:

http://openfuture.eu/paradox-of-open-responses/beyond-the-fetish-of-open/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) ยป peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.risks oa.objections oa.debates

Date tagged:

12/09/2022, 09:21

Date published:

12/09/2022, 04:21