The failing collaborate

“-It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.”

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Terre des Hommes (1939).

Crowdsourcing, or crowding, is the popular term for creating things together, usually with the net as hub. The process is mediated by the vast amount of collaborate, sociodynamically instituted tools available to the general public. Of late, we’re being led to believe that this process is the panaceum for all of those pesky creative ills we’ve all been waiting for.

And arguably, it really does have its uses. In the related world of open source software, for instance. Or fundraisning. Or any activitity with an altrustic motive or where distribution is concerned, it can perform wonders. I say open source software, because it is evident that the construction of software by means of working together and licensing the work to the general public has both yielded results that push the evolution forward where economy and intellectual property rights are concerned. Put simply, open source software works as a business model.

Another key aspect of the open source culture is the example of an independent project that finds completion of the missing pieces via the OS-framework; without necessarily sharing the entire contents of the whole thing. OS-communities are extremely useful for finding specialists that are willing to work towards a common goal, if set up in a way to flatter their resumé. Or need of pride of creation (for the participants and project owners alike). This relief from the restraint of deadlines, budgets or other organisational pitfalls are a bounty that exceeds any doubt towards of waiving the intellectual rights to the community. Thus follows that any sharing done with the community is done not out of an altruistic motive but rather out of an ego-driven need to accomplish a personal goal (whether that goal is to preserve the culture of the open source movement or simply tap the community for solutions makes no matter – it is still an egodriven process!).

The omenous signs begin collecting like dark clouds only when the open source process permutates into other fields than those of software engineering. It is a dangerous derivative because while the process of creating something collectively can at its best be wonderful in terms of project management, distribution and leadership, its downright abhorrent on a personal level. Thoughts belong to people on an individual level and function only inasmuch as one person can transmit this to another. The thought that sparks the action is the result of an individual process (even if it usually influenced by others). The process of transmission in a social collaborative has not only set aside but rather replaced the actual process of thinking.

The term open source is native to anyone below thirty. It is the natural, digital ecosystem of a public used to sharing playlists, random gossip (a petty process called “blogging”), participating in online scrapbooks (no names) or even more criminally vulgar matters of manipulating the scientific truth to suit personal needs and or tastes on Wikipedia. The open sourced crowd, paradoxically striving for an individual expression, loses any actual individuality when they hand over the concept of propriety to the general public. In short and in sharp contrary to popular belief, there is nothing personal in being public. The vast digital landscape becomes an endless real estate to be shared, repainted, remixed, re-told and re-sold – but never colonised. The cynic in me  is sure that Marx is laughing his pox-ridden ass off somewhere in a remote corner of Dantes Hell; because within all this seemingly gracious and utterly democratic landscape lies the ruin to any real creation. Even if the speed of distribution and sharing of ideas and thoughts has increased, these thoughts and processes still stem from one mind at a time. And the more selective and thorough this mind is, the better will the result be.

There is nothing wrong in asking for input (via any means, social or not) – but as we’ve seen online, there is seldom anything good to be said for letting strangers create it, haphazardly. The amount of work needed to control the crowd into creating anything useful might as well be put into the actual creation of it. The lack of decent content to match the outstanding technology of today is downright daunting. And it is that way because creating something truly individual is hard – but painting over a fleeting thought, publishing it online, adding photos to it and letting others comment it – is not: A bucket of crap, emptied in public will remain a bucket of crap, regardless of how many times it is re-shared, or remixed.

There is no escaping the fact that somewhere, at some point – some one will have to do some serious thinking.

(thanks to K.P)