Celebrating openness: Open means accessible, not unowned

"Before we celebrate this openness, let's take a pause. Being open doesn't mean being free. There are some naive notions about this Open Data Technology. This that what belongs to you belongs to me as well. We think copyright is over, it's copyleft. I belong to the old school of thought which doesn't accept your thing as mine and mine as yours. Like a child who clings to his toy and doesn't let anyone touch it, some love to be mean with anything which they think is theirs.  

 But again a question. Words are not yours. But the way you arrange them, pattern them, weave them and produce them carries your voice, your tone, your signature. And that voice, that tone and that signature is not open. It may be open to all, but it has to be owned by one. Open data has flattened accessibility only. It can't flatten talent. In the name of being open we can't pave way for the `grey market' of ideas where stolen products can be repackaged and relabelled against any name you like. 

Easy access should only make access easy, not the ownership which stays like a word cast in stone. We can be easy in approaching things, but contemplation has no backdoor. Googling out information about umbilical chord won't make me a surgeon. Playing a piano on a gadget can't make me a pianist. Writing softwares will make my physical act of writing easy, can't quite make me a writer. Accomplishments can't be cut and pasted but squeezed drop by drop by a constant rigour. Contemplation is what matters and notwithstanding the revolution technology has brought about contemplation has been a casualty. That is not what worries poets only, that worries even technologists. 

I conclude with the background of a recent book. Thomas Friedman was waiting for his friend who couldn't come in time and he got some minutes to think. As an acknowledgement to his friend who made him wait allowing him to have some time to think, Friedman named the book THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE. 

As we celebrate this openness of technology let's close our doors and have some time to think. "