Open-ness as defined by Taylor, chapter 1
Taylor introduces the term “Open” and it’s related state “Open-ness” on page 21 within Chapter One, about a quarter of the way into the chapter. Taylor, emphasizes investigation of the term “Open” in order to unpack the ideologies of open-ness that were featured in the Don Tapscott TED Talk presentation our class watched.
By emphasizing a platform of Open-ness, Tapscott and others like him implicitly categorize any and all who disagree with this branded concept as being “Closed” as Taylor later explicates.
By bringing the meshed terminology/ideology of Open-ness to the forefront of the chapter, Taylor introduces the working conceptualization of the Internet and digital/social media that so-called New Media thinkers laud. The Internet of their designs, is an idealized space where Open-ness represents freedom and democracy and other values that are worshipped in theory but generally difficult to guarantee because of, ahem, capitalism.
Open-ness is to guarantee that those who make profit off of digital and social media will continue to do so with growing access to information and little to no regulations around how this information is utilized. The purported open-ness of the web that these folks are foaming at the mouth for will continue to erect an invisible but almost identical structure to the unfettered hierarchy of late stage capitalism. It’s not about open-ness for equality and democracy, it’s about open-ness for making a lot of money and keeping that wealth centralized in the same set of hands that has always controlled it – the corporate community. It’s very libertarian and as Taylor rightly identifies it on page 24, “Darwinian.” The New Media cheerleaders applaud this, the techno-skeptics typically do not have a cohesive or adaptable critique of this open-ness that is not self-reflexively knee jerk and closed in response.
Taylor is a true muckraker – a techno muckraker. She upends the ambiguity of open-ness in order to point back to the ideological aims encompassed within its lofty touting by new media cheerleaders and the pessimistic naysaying of less messianic techno-skeptics. This concept of Open-ness as waved about by figures such as Don Tapscott is picked apart by Taylor and shown for what it is really about: promoting competition (economic) rather than protecting the equality and diversity of voices that could theoretically guarantee active participation in a public and global form of true democracy, or a limitless open society.
Sergio Rodriguez’s group
