Open Source for a New Society

Gilles Gravier
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

Part 3: Changing society with open source

This is the third part of our series on open source and society, where we will look at how to use open source to change the world.

When one sees the impact that open source can have on the world, it seems almost natural that some would actually decide to use open source specifically in order to provoke an impact on society. This has happened several times, from the creation of the Free Software Foundation or more recently of the distributed cryptocurrency bitcoin which was made entirely on open source. In this article, I will explore a few other projects that have chosen open source as a means to change society for the better.

I recently participated in a Meaningful Breakfast session at Impact Hub Geneva, for which the theme was Refugee Empowerment through Coding. We were presented an initiative called Project Integration, which aims at educating refugees in Western Switzerland (Geneva and Lausanne areas) how to code, so that they can get a job, make money, and work they way through to integration. This makes heavy use of open source both in the technologies taught, as well as the platforms used to teach.

Farmers around the world have created a project to help make their lives better by sharing in an open source way, tool designs so that everybody’s contribution makes the lives of everybody else better. The project is called Farm Hack. This is not the first case of open source used for something else than hardware. There is also open source for beer, colas, houses…

Another project is being driven by the German electricity provider innogy. Carsten Stöcker is aiming at changing the mobility economy by imagining a world where fleets of autonomous vehicles that are electric and shared (FAVES) slash the number of vehicles on the road by as much as 90%.

Hailing and paying for a ride or delivery is as easy as tapping a smart phone app. Car loans and insurance payments shrink or disappear because renting a vehicle when it would otherwise sit idle (or feeding electricity back to the electric grid) more than pays for it.

Perhaps best of all, imagine wider, less congested streets with more room for pedestrians and bicycles, clean air, much less global warming, shorter commutes, and even “crowd-funded” fleets of vehicles whose routing and pricing software is tuned to minimize energy use or provide low-cost transportation to underserved regions.

All these benefits are enabled by two emerging technologies that are rapidly becoming mainstream. The first is the self-driving vehicle, guided to the quickest route by real-time traffic updates and to the next customer by real-time passenger requests.

The second is blockchain-enabled, secure peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions that eliminate or minimize the need for centralized authorities such as banks or ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. The security of blockchain will allow owners to directly rent out their vehicles under terms and conditions they set themselves.

Using blockchain, trip charges will be automatically deducted from the passenger’s blockchain-enabled digital wallets or charged to their credit card, with payment instantly flowing to the vehicle owner. Access and identity tokens and P2P transactions will enable the easy, secure sharing of not only vehicles but infrastructure such as toll roads, recharging stations and parking lots. The blockchain-enabled identity of each user will carry proof of identity, age, insurance coverage and ability to pay, while protecting the anonymity of the passengers and information about their travels, as well as the security of their payment mechanisms. The smart contracts governing such transactions will be based on standard templates that assure accurate, instant collection of taxes and regulatory reporting, wherever the trip takes place.

Blockchain is a democratic, open source technology built upon distributed ownership of the underlying transaction infrastructure aiming to disintermediate all kind of middle men in the mobility ecosystem and to establish an authentic sharing economy.

In this shared mobility economy mobility becomes a secure, convenient and accessible value adding service for all people.

Everyone will transition from mobility users to mobility providers by using de-central platforms for the future mobility transaction layer while ensuring

  1. privacy
  2. equal participation
  3. optimal resource usage and
  4. dependable services

An open source transaction platform establishes trust in the transaction business logic protocols and will enable strong network effects and fast adoption of the technology. innogy believes that open source business logic deployed on public infrastructures is a human right.

innogy is now working with a strong mobility ecosystem to bring this vision to live and to design the future of mobility for the good of our society.

Here open source plays a key part, not only because most (if not all) of the significant blockchain platforms and technologies are open source, but also because through the choice of an open source transaction platform, innogy wants to empower citizens, users of the service, and providers of services alike to contribute to developing this society-changing infrastructure and associated services.

NOTE (20170803): It has just be brought to my attention that there is another project that is aiming at changing society. It’s also using blockchain, and open source, to build a shared society model with decentralized government and direct democracy. It is called Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform. All of the source code is on their GitHub repository.

It’s initiatives like this, tightly linking open source as a development methodology and shared economy backbone, that will drive the world of tomorrow and make it a better place where citizens can be the drivers of what our society will offer to us all.

(Note: This article — the part on innogy — was written jointly with Carsten Stöcker whom I want to thank for providing the valuable input!)

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Gilles Gravier

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Open source, blockchain, security, startups and venture capitalists, photography, music, gaming, photography… Work videos at: https://tinyurl.com/GillesYT

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