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In short, footnotes can’t ever become tPathways because pathways don’t exist outside of the oAgora and eAgora. It’s a simple matter of navigability. L In the Public Domain Continuity and sustainability through, rather than in spite of innovation To the book-bound mentality, such a strategy may appear at best unlikely and counterintuitive, at worst simply wrongheaded (Ideology of the Text). But it accurately (Accuracy) describes how oral tradition and the Internet operate in their versions of the public domain—the oAgora and the eAgora—the arenas in which each thought-technology thrives most naturally. Despite what our default cultural reflexes encourage us to believe, OT and IT prosper not via the textual program of fixation-through-capture, but via morphing (Variation within Limits ) and regeneration. For both pathways-based media, it’s rule-governed, ongoing evolution—rather than the dead end of tAgora fossilization—that promises continued usefulness and accessibility. Two aspects of OT and IT, both of them foreign to the textual world, stand out as especially important reasons underlying this counterintuitive reality (Disclaimer). The first is a radical openness to change, and I mean “radical” in two senses: fundamental and innovative. The second aspect is an unprivatized community of makers and users, a cyberdemocracy if you like. These two qualities make for a creative scenario that favors access, exchange, and diverse contributions over ownership, licensing, and proprietary products. Instead of microsocietal restriction by legal instruments and entrenched resistance to shared innovation, so typical of the régime of the book and page, OT and IT offer an invitation to cooperate and jointly innovate across the broad swath of the macrosociety. OT accomplishes its goals by opening the performance arena to all performers and (let’s not forget) all audiences, subject to individual cultural rules. Likewise, IT’s ever-emerging openness and ever-expanding community are sponsoring more and more open-source and open-standards sorts of activities. In short, if OT and IT operate like matched bookends, it’s precisely because they flourish by not closing the book on sharing, by conducting their business very much in the public domain. Let’s consider a few examples of IT behavior along these lines, instances of eDemocracy that are changing the landscape of our daily experience. In the Public Domain . 131 Open software In recent years the open-source movement has begun what some are already calling a major revolution in software design and development. The trend away from proprietary, vendor-regulated products and toward open-source software has meant that innovation of any sort can take place without the usual restrictions of licensing, commercial purchase, and penalties for modification. The source code is open, experimentation is open, and redistribution is open—all across the eAgora. In the simplest scenario, this initiative fosters adaptation of freely available applications to any subsequent purpose without abridgment of copyright. Thus anyone can tailor preexisting “open” software to a particular purpose without monetary impediment or fear of legal repercussions. Would your business function more smoothly if you could tweak a particular application by adding or substituting modules, or even by rewriting basic code? Under open-source rules,64 feel free to go ahead and tweak—no questions asked, no fees incurred, no laws broken. Likewise for the next innovator, and the next, as evolution goes on unhindered. Complementary to the open-source movement is a commitment to open standards, such as the OpenDocument standard65 adopted by the state of Massachusetts as a replacement for proprietary, nonconforming productivity applications . As of January 1, 2007,66 all state offices were required to install software that supports this new standard, which in effect disqualified any proprietary software that didn’t do the same. Initially that meant Microsoft Office was out, as were WordPerfect and Lotus Notes, none of which originally supported the standard. But the power of the eDemocratic movement has since brought many software companies around. But this story has another, more far-reaching side. Technophiles and ordinary citizens of the cyberdemocracy stand to profit from decreased costs and increased access, as did state workers—once they mastered the new applications that were required when “open season in Massachusetts” began. Capitulate to broader, community-based rule or suffer the consequences, the Massachusetts folks were saying to software vendors, even as they warmly welcomed makers, users, and workers into an open, seamless eCommunity. Open courseware Add to these symptoms of a deeply rooted and growing commitment to sharing —as opposed to owning (Owning...

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