Freedom in the Noosphere

From a perspective grounded in cybernetics and the noosphere concept, the FOSS movement and the evolution of its philosophy into the arts and sciences becomes much more than a incredibly efficient model of software creation or even just a potentially better organizational theory. When thinking of the Internet as a “global brain” the importance of freedom in the software running the Internet becomes a glaringly important issue. The simple fact that FOSS is free of change in the large majority of cases makes access to this super-human nervous system possible for more people. But more importantly, the freedom of people to look at the technology underlying the Internet, to investigate it’s synapses and nodes, and to develop their technical structure as a collaborative human project, not as a trade secret, becomes an issue of fundamental importance. Assuming we are developing a kind of global brain, is it desirable for its underlying makeup to be a protected piece of intellectual property belonging to a massive corporation? Were this the case it is nearly inevitable that a massive portion of human intelligence would not be able to afford participation due to lack of funds, propriety hardware schemes would limit access to machinery made by the owners partner corporations, governments could easily police content and our collective intellectual capacity as a planet could become another set of commodities in the global marketplace.

As the debates rage over globalization and its effects, I find it important to recognize that some form of “planetization” is practically inevitable, and that the struggle we are undergoing as a species is rooted in learning how to proceed in this process. There are proponents for a global capitalist system who would prefer to see nearly all resources, services and even ideas organized and distributed across the planet as commodities in a global market. Another perspective views the globalization process as a project of human collaboration with the goal of mutual development by means of the sustainable management of “spaceship earth.” We may well discover that a virtually ignored subculture of computer programmers, who have so often been stereotyped as anti-social loners, have contributed to this planetization process a most profound model of global cooperation whose impact beyond its technical confines has helped to promote a new understanding of how human minds can collaborate in a uniquely global process of creation.