Open Society

We might naturally like to say:

A society that poses no societal barriers to entry, and has no formally codified or enforced hierarchy of power. Examples include Usenet, Wiki, the Internet, etc. Such societies are often founded upon libertine principles and on the belief that individuals can interact in a polite and unselfish way.

But,

GeorgeSoros has founded a multi-billion dollar international charitable initiative based around KarlPopper's alternate definition described at http://www.soros.org/faq/index.html. Our chances of competing with this definition are not good. Best find another name for the sentiments espoused here.

The major difference appears to be in the notion of POWER. By the definition on the above site that an OpenSociety "is a society based on the recognition that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, that different people have different views and interests...", It would seem to be very compatible with our first definition above, however it goes on to state that "there is a need for institutions to protect the rights of all people to allow them to live together in peace." In fact, as the definition progresses, it seems to be very closely aligned with what many would provide as the definition of ModernAmericanDemocracy?. While the ideals sound great, history would seem to indicate that in any society with a formal hierarchy of power and a notion of enforced law a PowerElite? will form which will then act in it's own interests rather than in the interests of the general public. If Karl & Mr. Soros have coined the term OpenSociety, what should we call the first definition? PorousSociety? feels negative to me, an AnarchisticSociety? seems to downplay the order that emerges... -- SeanMcNamara

The entire software development community could be described this way, at least to some extent. -- MikeSmith

I'm not sure I agree with that statement at all... Almost all software development is predicated on a well-defined organizational hierarchy of business managers, project managers, technology leads, implementors, testers, and tech-writers working in a (supposedly) well defined, and in many cases caste-like process. Even open source software development has a control structure with project owners providing repository access to code maintainers who are responsible for review and integration of submissions from the GreatUnwashed?. There seems to be an effort on behalf of the AgileMethodology folk to break down the barriers between technical and business resources within the enterprise, and the XP notion of collective code ownership certainly contributes to a more-open social environment, however the Agile approach is a relatively new one, and is the exception, I believe, rather than the rule. -- SeanMcNamara

I guess I was thinking more about the "barriers-to-entry" part; i.e. "at least to some extent". Software development has a LevelPlayingField. -- MikeSmith

That's an interesting point, and raises the question of how we define entry into a social environment. My initial thought was that entry is equivalent to participation, and that participation (especially in an info-centric society) centers around the contribution of information. By this definition, any restriction of input to the collective would be a barrier to participation, and thus a barrier to entry. We could, I suppose, define entry as the freedom to consume the information produced by a society, but I think this definition is much less useful, and could be used to argue, for instance, that we are all part of the broadcast-media society because we consume television and radio. Perhaps a way to reconcile this is to define information-centric societies into the following categories:

InformationProducingSociety?s : NBC, ABC, BBC, NPR, New York Times, etc.
InformationConsumingSociety?s : Subscribers of Dr. Dobbs Magazine, People who watch "Friends"
CollaborativeInformationSociety?s : Wiki, Usenet, IRC

Note that we can strip away the "information" segment of the name, and have generic categories that may be applicable to non-information-centric social groups.

By categorizing this way, we can then specifically define what constitutes entry (and thus membership) in each society. Membership in a production society would require that contributions made by an individual are accepted for transmission to consumers. Consumer membership requires the ability to consume the resource (this probably applies to TragedyOfTheCommons type situations.) And collaborative society membership indicates that the individual can both produce and consume the resource.

Obviously, people who create broadcast media are also often consumers, so somehow we need to tie in the notion of societal goals to the definition. I've Wiki-worded the above categories to provide a forum for discussion and definition of those types (should they seem viable conceptually.) -- SeanMcNamara

The InformationConsumer? may take part in the KnowledgeProliferation activities of societies and groups, whether or not constituted as a "member" who has formalized "entry" into the "society". It is possible to be an independent, impartial and socially un-involved consumer of information, especially in the 21st Century. In the consumption, acceptance and sharing of common knowledge, one may become "involved" to the point of socialization, but the mere consumption alone does not formalize a membership. That said, without such socialization and formalization, the persistence of the information can not be assured, and the synergy present in the social interaction which results in the generation of new, more extensive knowledge is lost.