Again with the laziness and thoughts on an Open Source World

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So, again I have started a project and have not followed through on it. I have been trying to figure out why, and I really think it is because I have little (read zero) accountability right now. I know that few, if any, people are going to be reading this anytime soon. So I don't write. And as I don't write, no one reads. Thus, I am caught in a widening gyre. So, I figure the only way out is to commit to doing it long enough to gather a readership that will then hold me accountable.

Chad over at Homebrewed Christanity just posted "25 Random Things about Jesus." It is his take on what Jesus may have written had the "25 Random Things" craze swept first century Palestine. There are some interesting tidbits for thought in there, so I urge you to take a look.

Also, Toby Sturgill has an interesting post that went up a couple of days ago about the 5 brands that "get" social media. In the list is one that is close to my heart, and that is Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, the shop that brings us OpenOffice.org. The lesson that Toby takes from this is that

Social media is a culture of transparency and honesty that must be embraced, leading by example is one of the best ways to introduce it to a company. Few things are better than a CEO that blogs or uses twitter.

I really don't think that we should be suprised by a company like Sun, that, in a lot of ways, has thrown itself behind the Open Source movement, to be interested in transparenct and honesty. In fact, Sun has recognized that these two qualities can play a significant role in their grabing a significant market share of the office application suite market.

As I mentioned on Toby's site, I think that there is a wierd zeitgeist right now that is pushing for these qualities across the board. I am not sure if social media and web 2.0 have influenced this, or if they are a result of this. I think the best place to look for this in the dominate culture right now is not only the Obama campaign, but also how is appears that he is going to govern. Just today at a Town Hall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana Obama stated that they are going to launch a .gov website that people can go on and see where recovery money is being spent in thier area and then report on if it is being used effectivly or not. What we are talking about here is not just a campaign that had the markings of an open source campaign (the argument can be made that it was mainly show) but what appears to be open source governce, wikipedia governence. This idea, that perhaps an individual might be wrong, but the collective wisdom and insight will bend toward the truth, could have explosive and revolutionary consequences.

I think that this is a frame that we can begin to use to understand the Emergent Movement as well. I think that we can look on it as an open source church movement. I think that this is deffinitly an idea that is worth exploring in a little more detail, along with the other ideas that are represented here as well. Is this the true meaning/understanding as we move into a post-modern world, that we are moving into a world that is open source? It seems to me that this may be the case.

Emergent, open source, Jesus, meta, governance, politics, Obama