16 November 2006

Another View of the Opens

Here's a presentation by Jamais Cascio, a "foresight specialist", who despite his daft job title has put together quite a nice gentle trot through the opens. He gets most of it right, aside from the egregious clanger of calling Linux an operating system....

6 comments:

  1. Trust me, this was not the audience eager for a discussion of the distinctions between an OS and a kernel.

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  2. Oh, I'm sure: it's just that once you've talked to Richard Stallman for a few hours, strange things happen to your brain when you see Linux described as an operating system, and you find yourself reaching involuntarily for that vitriol-dipped pen....

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  3. I'm also waiting for someone to take me to task for calling Linux "open source" instead of "free/libre software." Again, it's a consideration of the audience's time and attention.

    BTW, "foresight specialist" isn't my daft title. My daft title is "world-builder-in-chief."

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  4. "Foresight specialist" makes me think of an optician for cyclops (and also makes me wonder whether you have a colleague who is a "hindsight specialist"); "world-builder-in-chief" sounds much better.

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  5. Anonymous6:35 pm

    Futurism has enough baggage as a concept (ranging from the unfortunately fascism-linked art & architecture movement to the variety of self-promoting hucksters calling themselves futurists) that a good number of us who think about future possibilities professionally have taken to emphasizing "foresight" rather than "futures" as our interest.

    Conversely, we're *all* hindsight specialists (given that it is reputedly 20/20), but in terms of professions, historians probably fit best.

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  6. Yes, it's a problem when an otherwise useful term has been shucked of its meaning.

    How about mellonologist?.

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