Only openness can power next wave of human progress

DcData AdminPublic

Mitchell Baker is contributing as part of #TheOpenAgenda—a campaign by Telefónica Digital to provoke debate around the benefits of an open philosophy for digital, technology and innovation. Get involved with the debate using #TheOpenAgenda on Twitter or view more at www.theopenagenda.com

When the Web was developed, it wasn’t particularly planned out, it wasn’t an incremental change to an existing product, it was something quite new, and became an unplanned mass movement. We’re all fortunate; because the Web emerged from an academic environment, it came out very open and free.

The Web was a new way of looking at information, a technology with lots of possibilities. Now we can look back and see how fast it’s grown, how different it’s become, how many changes have happened and what new ideas have occurred. All of that is because we’ve been able to draw on all of human ingenuity to try new things, not just one central idea determining what we could try.

Full story