Openness Activities Table
Activity/Good Less <— Openness —> More
Open Society Limited right to assembly Freedom to assemble SMS & Social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) as political organizing tools
Media State controlled, centralized media Corporate controlled media Independent or distributed media (e.g., blogs)
Cultural content Books / Radio / Television cell-content Collaborative production of content (youTube, open source movies)
Government decision making Centralized decision-making Provide information and perhaps some forms for feedback (email address etc.) participatory decision making (e.g., participatory budgeting)
Government Information Provision Provide data in paper format for those who can come in and get it, e.g., government owned/collected spatial and demographic data Provide data online. E.g., publicly available spatial data (aerial imagery, municipal boundaries, aggregated census data, etc.) Provide (re)useable data online or collaborative development of data E.g., Participatory GIS using government sponsored spatial data
Government service provision Provided by offices Office & e-services Collaborative creation of services
Software development/provision Proprietary software Software APIs Open source collaborative development
Software use Use proprietary software Use open source software (e.g., open source in government, open source e-voting)
Personal communication Voice Landline phones Mobile Phones
Devices Proprietary/patented hardware Open software devices (e.g., Open Moko) Open Hardware - In several cases, most end users (without programming skills) have not cared about FOSS or Proprietary tools as long as it works for what they want. This is a grey areas for assessing utility of openness
Science/Research Pay science journals, Proprietary research data Online open journals Open research data
Education Resources Textbooks Textbooks online Collaborative development of school curriculum
Information Voice, Reference books, etc Encyclopaedia (Information) free online Collaborative information development: Forums, Wikipedia, etc…
Internet Access Dial-up Broadband cable and/or licensed spectrum wireless Open wireless / mesh networks

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