Collaborative Production and Open Source Production are important concepts for understanding new information technologies and their relation to social networks. For our purposes, we can understand these as closely related terms describing social arrangements through which groups of people work together in order to create something.
Collaborative Production can refer to any creative process in which several people (or more) cooperate. In a new information technology environment, the term takes on special importance because NITs reduce the limitations of collaboration. Interactive networks allow more people to work together. They can communicate instantly, and they do not necessarily require face-to-face interaction. Digitization allows for the creation of multiple copies (or multiple versions) of documents and other file types. In short, NITs can create new opportunities for expanded collaboration among more people than an “old media” environment can enable.
The term open source is often used to refer to a method for creating and improving software, but has been applied more broadly to any kind of collaborative production process that attempts to keep restrictions on participation as limited as possible.
Today we will have a quick introduction to these concepts and we will look at one of the best-known examples of online collaborative production, Wikipedia.
For this week, please:
- Explore the Wikipedia site;
- Read About Wikipedia;
- Read the Wikipedia article on Open Source;
- Read the Wikipedia article on Wikis
