Mozilla Open Education course: seminar 3
Open web tech
Again, I missed this seminar because of poor internet connectivity on the day and am catching up on the audio after the fact. Here are my notes from the presentation given by Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard.
- Open as a concept
- Innovation and change = important building blocks
- Relevance and why open matters
- Repurposing key web technologies
“Open”: what does it mean? First of all, the opposite of open is not necessarily “closed”…though useful terms, in this context they shouldn’t be seen as polarising. In the context of the open web, the opposite of open may be thought of as opaque…you don’t understand how it works, can’t see inside it, don’t know how it came about. Gives a sense of the visual. Therefore, open could be thought of as “transparent”.
Not requiring permission is an important component of open because it relates to patents, licensing, etc. Comparison of video codecs like h264 and ogg theora and the difference that open licensing makes with regards permission to use the code.
Side note: all content from this course is available under an open license for anyone to re-purpose for any use.
“Generative” – word that is used widely in academia. Meaning that through your action you allow others to do something as well. It allows people other than the original creator of the work to change the work and use it for things that the creator didn’t think of, it facilitates the mulitiplication of efforts and exploration.
“Innovation” is over-used in many circles…a black box in which things are improved but where the process is invisible. The most important characteristic of innovation is that it represents change (both good and bad change). Intentional disruption = standing up to make a difference in a way that’s going to be uncomfortable…and people are often reluctant to change because it’s uncomfortable. Setting things up to purposefully be uncomfortable and going up against various interests (possibly commercial or political) who would not benefit from that change. Setting yourself up against the status quo. In an open model where you’re trying to encourage change / innovation / disruption, you’re going to run up against issues.
Where does experimentation come from? Assume that progress and innovation stem from experimentation and failure (learning from our mistakes), it’s important to understand this process as it leads to change. The core group of contributors to large projects are not necessarily the ones doing the experimenting, it usually comes from the periphery. How do you set yourself up to have “edges” in the community and be open in order to promote experimentation and innovation? This disruption is difficult for business to commit to because it’s hard to determine future value in experimentation and innovation.
As messy and painful as it is, the open web has worked well. Very few other inventions have disrupted communication so comprehensively before the web (maybe the printing press, telephone). An instantaneous communication network that people are continually changing and re-purposing without having to ask permission from anyone is very important. The nature of the web made this possible i.e. intentionally built on a model of open technology / software where anyone could make changes without permission.
What makes something open web technology? Web browser is the gateway to the web and we spend a lot of time using it, therefore it should be comfortable and easy to use. Can you see the page source to understand how it works? Being able to look at somebody’s source is part of the transparency / open-ness of the web. Source is delivered (HTML, Javascript) and compiled / executed locally. Historical mistake where originally authors were writing simple documents where source didn’t matter as much. Now, this presents as a learning opportunity where others can see what you’ve done and use it in other ways. This doesn’t mean that you should copy and paste everything, rather figure out how it works and learn that way.
If you have access to the source you may be able to figure out the API (or the API is open), which means that you can then re-purpose the application. Twitter is an example…even though it’s only a simple application (status updates), others have figured out how to use it in different, more complex ways because of it’s open API and a whole ecosystem has developed around it.
Another example is how people have changed Google search by implementing code in the browser, even though Google hasn’t explicitly given that permission. An example of people using the open-ness of the web to figure things out and make changes that have not explicitly been allowed by an open license.
Key peices of open web technology:
- HTML = core of open web, describes document structure, content, continually improving and evolving
- XML = more generalised data management (not as widely used), semantic meaning is important in the open web
- CSS = controls presentation of content (unlike HTML), can imply visual structure, media context, also implies semantic meaning
- Images = static visual medium that conveys expression (jpg, png are simple but allows everyone to use), adds context to the open web
- Javascript = integration of all the other peices, makes the static web dynamic
- Open video = transparent, generative, not closed implementation of web video (in contrast to Flash), using ogg theora (patent- and royalty-free video codec)
Will keep trying though