Mitchell Baker is contributing as part of #TheOpenAgenda—a campaign by Telefónica Digital to provoke debate around the benefits of an open philosophy for digital, technology and innovation. Get involved with the debate using #TheOpenAgenda on Twitter or view more at www.theopenagenda.com
When the Web was developed, it wasn’t particularly planned out, it wasn’t an incremental change to an existing product, it was something quite new, and became an unplanned mass movement. We’re all fortunate; because the Web emerged from an academic environment, it came out very open and free.
The Web was a new way of looking at information, a technology with lots of possibilities. Now we can look back and see how fast it’s grown, how different it’s become, how many changes have happened and what new ideas have occurred. All of that is because we’ve been able to draw on all of human ingenuity to try new things, not just one central idea determining what we could try.
Openness is important, not only for the Web and technology but also for the human experience. Openness provides the ability to set the rules for ourselves or experiment and work to create a better experience. Openness is critical for the human experience, critical to problem solving—and if you view the problems facing the globe and the human population today we need the ability to solve problems. The fact is we need choice, if the options or technology are closed the decision has been already made for us and this directly impacts our lives.
For human experience to be open and free, the underlying technology needs to enable it. That’s why fighting for an open Web is important.
The Web’s Forces Against Openness
Open vs. closed is a dichotomy in many areas of life; many systems move from open to closed or strike a balance between the two.
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