Robert Steele – Open Source Answer to Everything?
Robert Steele was the keynote speech to kick off the first day of Gnomedex. He made a very interesting speech, although it was a lot more political than I was expecting. Essentially, he is a big believer in open everything, and he addressed a lot of our political problems to make the point that openness would solve the problems.
He talks about the power of the blogging community to influence politics, and how blogs can help take the country back. Steele is a big believer in OPEN. Open source is one thing, but Steel’s major focus today was open government. He even talked about open spectrum….why are we selling spectrum? Open government. Open networks. Freedom to create by all. Open everything.
We’re about to see end user driven innovation.
The traditional media isn’t doing their job, so it falls to bloggers. It is easy to think of blogs in a very limited sense. A form of publishing and that’s it. What Steele is saying is that blogging really does serve a world purpose. It is publishing brought to the masses. To you. To me. It gets us out of the top down arrangement of the media, where most of us are readers who consume the writings of a few reporters, usually corporate in nature. Today, we can all be writers and publishers.
Whether one agrees with Steele or not, the overriding point is that the populace insisting on open communication and then using the medium of the blog to serve as open intelligence is really a key component of the answer. Have something to say? Get out there and blog about it.
Coming back to open source, it is usually thought to be free code, free software. But, the philosophy behind it is larger than that. It is freedom of use, freedom of thought. And Steele’s point is that this philosophy taken out to the world situation would solve all kinds of problems. He has a point, although I think Steele is a little too utopian in his views and, like too many in the political realm, he tends to use hyperbole to get attention. When he began speaking, I was thinking “what is this, a damn soap box campaign speech?” But, it got better.
Perhaps we, as internet publishers, play a larger role in the world than some would have thought. What do you think? Do you think a blog is just a form of publishing, suitable for family updates? Or do you think it could serve a larger purpose in the world scene?
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Robert David STEELE Vivas
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
