“Certainly the electro-magnetic discoveries have recreated the simultaneous ‘field’ in all human affairs, so that the human family now exists under conditions of a ‘global village’. We live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums.”

“Every new technology necessitates a new war.”

Marshall McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore the geo-political and cultural impact of Free and Open Source Software and the development strategy on which it is based. As heated debate continues over the validity and legality of intellectual property rights, legislation and file-sharing on the Internet, I argue that free software has provided much of the arts, sciences and media with a highly influential ideological and technical framework, based on cooperative creation and shared property, that has had a transformative and empowering impact on culture as a whole.