A long time ago bottom up development was the only type. People who were using the objects were the ones that were making the improvements on them. This type of development not only prevents alterations of an idea for selfish reasons, but also creates a community around the object itself. The Danish windmill is one of the last, large scale examples of this. Somehow, development of ideas, tools, and products were taken from the open hands of the people and forced into an enclosed room, where the ‘experts’ improve them, then throw them over the wall to the people who pay whatever they are told is the proper price.
Today, I read an article about crowdsourcing. Online collaborative efforts have existed for quite some time and the entire web 2.0 concept exists because of user generated content, but the marriage of the two can have some really interesting repercussions. For example, WEbook is a project that invites online collaborators to come post written material on their site with the hopes of getting published. Users of the site can then vote on the writings and the highest ranked writings will be published in a book. Local Motors uses crowdsourcing to develop cars.
Bottom up development didn’t ever die. Open source developments have existed since the birth of the computer. What I find interesting, though, is that now these open source or bottom up projects are being brought back into the physical world. Large scale collaborative efforts that are taking advantage of technology are not limited to the computer screen. Community, not bound by geographic constraints, can once again be fostered around the development of ideas.
[via 6 Angry Men]
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pm and is filed under humanity, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
…and designers are the ones that have to patch up this disconnect between product development and users.
…and designers are the ones that have to patch up this disconnect between product development and users.
April 25th, 2008
9:01 am
Well in this scenario, I am not sure if it is the designers that are patching up the disconnect. By allowing these projects to develop in the open, the users are the designers. Therefore it is the people who start these crowdsourcing initiatives that are attempting to utilize bottom up development.
Well in this scenario, I am not sure if it is the designers that are patching up the disconnect. By allowing these projects to develop in the open, the users are the designers. Therefore it is the people who start these crowdsourcing initiatives that are attempting to utilize bottom up development.
April 25th, 2008
10:23 am
Oh yes, i was referring to the “modern classic” way of product development “taken from the open hands of the people into an enclosed room”, that you were talking about in the post.
Oh yes, i was referring to the “modern classic” way of product development “taken from the open hands of the people into an enclosed room”, that you were talking about in the post.
April 25th, 2008
12:29 pm
This story touches on a couple issues i find interesting about the creative potential of social web activity:
A) The possibility of harnessing users’ online actions to generate a productive output. I don’t mean data-mining, i’m talking about something like “action-mining”. For example, millions of people spend countless hours online playing video games that basically involve making rapid and continuous tactical and strategic decisions. These decisions are often staged in fantastical environments involving killing monsters and collecting gold or (slightly less fantastical) killing terrorists or throwing footballs. That requires a lot of mental computation and in a sense these people are basically working free of charge. (But since it’s fun they probably don’t think of it as “work.”) What if all the tactical decisions that players make in these apparently useless first-person-shooter narratives could be mapped onto a different data set in a way that would yield tactical solutions to real/practical problems. For example, could it be possible to transpose the actions of a Doom player from the environment of mazes and bad guys onto the environment of, say, the commodity futures market? –So a player might think he’s just running around a maze shooting bad guys (data set: maze terrain and armed opponents) while in fact he’s making tactical decisions about the sale of rice and corn futures (data set: global food resources and rival investors). (How great and scary would that be?!) This sounds a bit abstract and the example is fairly absurd but i’m convinced that it should be possible–all you need is to find two data sets that exhibit sufficient topological similarities for a useful transposition of actions to take place.
(oops, this comment is getting pretty long, and i haven’t even started part B yet…)
B) The politics and power-dynamics at play in an electronically-mediated design environment. The preceding scenario raises questions about who is “harvesting” or mining the actions and to what ends. (The hypothetical Doom player doesn’t necessarily know that he’s evolving my investment investment strategy–the transposition occurs behind the scene.) Similarly with the Local Motors project. When you build a windmill on your land there is total transparency about what you’re doing; you’re working for yourself alone and you will reap the benefits of your labour (politics of feudalism aside). But when you submit a design to Local Motors you are not working for yourself– you’re working within very specific criteria that they have set out– and you won’t necessarily reap the benefits of your labour as the submission process involves waiving your rights to the design. Building a stone windmill is quite an unmediated process, but social web applications are highly mediated and the one who controls the environment usually (always?) has and agenda that is not fully transparent or equitable. Unless social web environments allow full transparency and some form of participatory control/governing then I don’t think they can really be considered a form of “bottom up” socially-driven development.
This story touches on a couple issues i find interesting about the creative potential of social web activity:
A) The possibility of harnessing users’ online actions to generate a productive output. I don’t mean data-mining, i’m talking about something like “action-mining”. For example, millions of people spend countless hours online playing video games that basically involve making rapid and continuous tactical and strategic decisions. These decisions are often staged in fantastical environments involving killing monsters and collecting gold or (slightly less fantastical) killing terrorists or throwing footballs. That requires a lot of mental computation and in a sense these people are basically working free of charge. (But since it’s fun they probably don’t think of it as “work.”) What if all the tactical decisions that players make in these apparently useless first-person-shooter narratives could be mapped onto a different data set in a way that would yield tactical solutions to real/practical problems. For example, could it be possible to transpose the actions of a Doom player from the environment of mazes and bad guys onto the environment of, say, the commodity futures market? –So a player might think he’s just running around a maze shooting bad guys (data set: maze terrain and armed opponents) while in fact he’s making tactical decisions about the sale of rice and corn futures (data set: global food resources and rival investors). (How great and scary would that be?!) This sounds a bit abstract and the example is fairly absurd but i’m convinced that it should be possible–all you need is to find two data sets that exhibit sufficient topological similarities for a useful transposition of actions to take place.
(oops, this comment is getting pretty long, and i haven’t even started part B yet…)
B) The politics and power-dynamics at play in an electronically-mediated design environment. The preceding scenario raises questions about who is “harvesting” or mining the actions and to what ends. (The hypothetical Doom player doesn’t necessarily know that he’s evolving my investment investment strategy–the transposition occurs behind the scene.) Similarly with the Local Motors project. When you build a windmill on your land there is total transparency about what you’re doing; you’re working for yourself alone and you will reap the benefits of your labour (politics of feudalism aside). But when you submit a design to Local Motors you are not working for yourself– you’re working within very specific criteria that they have set out– and you won’t necessarily reap the benefits of your labour as the submission process involves waiving your rights to the design. Building a stone windmill is quite an unmediated process, but social web applications are highly mediated and the one who controls the environment usually (always?) has and agenda that is not fully transparent or equitable. Unless social web environments allow full transparency and some form of participatory control/governing then I don’t think they can really be considered a form of “bottom up” socially-driven development.
May 2nd, 2008
2:32 am
Interesting. Ever heard of the hundred monkeys theory? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitemonkeytheorem
Interesting. Ever heard of the hundred monkeys theory? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitemonkeytheorem
May 8th, 2008
7:36 pm
[...] while back, I made a post about crowdsourcing. It is an internet buzzword that identifies the productive path of online networking. Recently, I [...]
[...] while back, I made a post about crowdsourcing. It is an internet buzzword that identifies the productive path of online networking. Recently, I [...]
August 15th, 2008
5:41 pm