WMD's

We are not being destroyed from falling bombs but by rapidly falling bonds and markets. It seems as if there is no force, coalition, or government that can correct this situation. Open source is not relevant in this matter as a development idealogy but one for transparency. Anything done in openness is inherently better and consequently side agreements and secret conversations are bourne out of hypocrisy within the context of struggles for power.

The new super powers are now truly The Super Markets on the global stage. And the more we understand that we are interconnected and interwoven than ever before we can see how complicated the problems are as civilizations and not just individual countries.

Open source and Globalization are the two newest 800 pound gorillas in the room.

Open Source = Updates

As I sit here with my 4-day old T-Mobile G1 phone I am most struck by the updates, i.e. early and often. Even though, to me, it is a converged device of my iPhone and BlackBerry Curve and even with relevant hardware it is still the software, stupid. While my trusty Curve only had one OS update this whole year it still made me plug it into a PC via USB and download, backup, and restore. Ditto for my unlocked, jailbroken iPhone now running 2.1.

But on Saturday morning I received a message on my phone telling me that an OS upgrade/update was already available and even better - it was delivered OTA (over the air) without any PC and USB cable needed. Now to be fair it was shipped with RC28 and this update was for RC30 but for a new OS this is pretty cool.

Now for the kicker....the G1 runs on Google's new Android platform that is open source and the SDK is readily available for any who want to write apps/code/fixes. Sooooo that means that the software can be written by a community of developers instead of a proprietary group within a single company (no matter how large) it will never be bigger than a global community of rabid fans.

How can voting be made more secure and exact?

Open source the machines and the application. Anytime there is a proprietary way of doing something it can always be hacked or changed to serve someone else. If the technology community designed the tools we use to vote they would already have inherent weaknesses patched in development. Instead there is one or three companies manufacturers out there who test and re-test the equipment then it is release into the wild and they are exposed to the real world.

Yesterday my wife asked me why we can't hold voting online. Hmmm, something to think about. Funny how we can buy stocks online, watch our 401k, order our clothes and even post our most private thoughts in online blogs and journals. But the world wide web has not been used for voting. We Americans stand in line for iPhones, Star Wars movies, and for delayed airplanes but for voting? It seems so old-fashioned. Maybe in the not too distant future the fundamentals of open source can be used in the development of voting machinery and quite possibly the voting process. Sort of sounds like a representative form of government with a majority rule, does it not?