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Open Source, AI, and the Global War on Fascism
I have been struggling recently with where to direct my focus and what I could write about that would add something material to the ongoing debates on “AI”, technology, and politics. Thanks to my friend Randy Bias for this post that inspired me to follow up:
This post triggered a few thoughts I’ve been having on the subject. Namely, that open source was born at a time that coincided with the apex of neoliberal thought, corresponding with free trade, borderless communication and collaboration, and other naive ideologies stemming from the old adage “information wants to be free”. Open source, along with its immediate forbear free software, carried with it a techno-libertarian streak that proliferated throughout the movement. Within the open source umbrella, there was a wide array of diverse factions: the original free software political movement, libertarian entrepreneurs and investors, anarcho-capitalists, political liberals and progressives, and a hodgepodge of many others who came around to see the value of faster collaboration enabled by the internet. There was significant overlap amongst the factions, and the coalition held while each shared mutual goals.
