Open Entropy

= the notion that increased openness may be inevitable

Discussion

"our course towards ‘openness’ seems almost inevitable - a sort of ‘open entropy’. There are several characteristics of the ubiquitous information technologies we have surrounded ourselves with that contribute to this:

• The marginal cost of information dissemination is essentially zero. As are storage and processing in many cases.

• Many ‘actors’ are in a position to disseminate(/store/process) information (accessibility is high).

• Most information is disseminated openly to all (a result of the culture, and the nature of the infrastructure).

• The published information is all but impossible to ‘undisseminate’.

• The published information lasts indefinitely (those who’ve suffered data loss will raise a brow, but the point is a digital photo never fades…)

Put together, this means if that any single person, anywhere, knows something and decides to publish it online (at zero cost), then it will irretrievably be available to anybody, anywhere for all time. This would seem to lead to a pretty high chance of many things becoming ‘open’! (http://www.bravenewcollaboration.com/2008/09/10/open-entropy/)