dose

You know what’s so cool about the internet, blogging, and free libre open source software & culture (FLOSS&C). The democracy of it all…if you write something worthwhile, or do something interesting, or launch a little project that might just catch on, well, nice things can come of it.

Since I’ve been exploring this world of free libre open source software & culture I have been astounded at how easy it is, if you have something to say, to engage in stimulating conversations. Within the space of a week, during the summer, a blogger I comment on & who comments on my blog occasionally, who happens to live in California, was up in Montreal - we met up, and ended up having a stellar dinner party at my house with music and great food. Read a little about that evening here, if you are interested.

Later that week, out of the blue, the brain behind Wirearchy contacted me, said he was in Montreal, had read some stuff on my blog, and did I want to meet for coffee?…sure, I said. Cool world.

And with Jon of Wirearchy I mentioned one of those funny blog-world stories…when I first got into all this crazy stuff, I was reading boris’ webblog, for months. I had commented on his weblog a couple of times, he’d commented on mine. Then he posted pic of himself, and I realized, Ha! I know Boris. We used to stand at the bar at Blizzarts on Thursday nights, side by side, and make small talk while drinking St-Ambroise. For years! …

And, more excitingly, that week, the father/godfather/guru of the free software movement, rms = richard stallman was in town for a conference (which incidently ended with a big verbal battle royal between rms & marcus b of creative commons canada, see my report here, and note — again, the internet is so cool — that marcus actually commented on my review. Ha!). rms is, in my opinion one of the most important political philosophers of our age — at least one of the most important implementers of political philosophy. Well, I had exchanged emails with rms, asking for an interview, which he granted. (The article is still in the works). Point being, I got to go to dinner with rms, which was … educational!

Now, where was I. Ah yes, talking about the inspiring figures on the internet. I would say other than the technical world - beyond my comprehension - of free software development, there are three projects which I think are of huge importance, and have been crawling around in my brain for some while:
-wikipedia - the great open encyclopedia
-project gutenberg, a repository of thousands e-texts of books in the public domain (eg, Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent)
-and the Internet Archive, a place for public stuff to be kept on the net …

Now archive was founded by Brewster Kahle, and if you want to hear something inspiring, take a listen to this talk he gave, arguing that we have the technology to put all human knowledge on the net, and make it open to everyone. This was one of the most exciting things I have heard in a long time — that not only is there the will and the interest, but also the technology to really do this - to totally open knowledge for anyone with an internet connection to use. (See, also, MIT’s wonderful open courseware project!).

So all this stuff’s been swirling around in the old brain, as mentioned in this post.

Now I’m a writer, so I like books. I like radio too, and if I can listen to good radio, I do. There’s not much good radio in Montreal, so I was pretty happy when I discovered podcasting (duh!), and found not just some good proper amateur podcasts, but also the forward thinking public broadcasters out there who are podcasting stuff like crazy (hey cbc, drop your lockout, and act like a man, and while you’re at it get your head out of your ass about podcasting). ABC and BBC, as well as NPR, are all offering a slate of great content by podcast.

So books, writing, podcasting. I went on a long drive recently, and was looking all over for audiobooks, free to download. Harder to find than you’d imagine. Everyone charges money (even if it’s just a little bit), or so I thought, and then I found this great project: Urban Art Adventures, doing a free podcast of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, a book I’ve never read. Well, Jan from UAA does a spectacular job, very professional, very good rendering, and also very personal, clearly a passionate DYI project of the highest quality. This, I thought, is what the internet is all about. And I sat in my car wondering how long it would be before Jan finished LCL — it takes her 10 hrs! she told me, to produce one chapter! — and when she would start her next book.

My next thought was: why not use all this opensource, volunteer passion, mix in books, podcasts, gutenberg, and the archive, and come up with something that can really contribute to the public domain. And so LibriVox was born (sorry to keep posting about this, but it’s been taking up lots of my energy of late).

Well, now we’ve got 8 books on the go, something like 60+volunteers, and download.it from Italy is starting a parallel project. But the coolest thing of all, and the reason I started this long post is this: Brewster Kahle, from archive.org, and one of the great visionaries of the free internet movement, is pushing an idea of Open Library, and he likes LibriVox… so we hope to participate in an event with them. I’ll be trying to work out details in the next few days.

Cool, eh?