I dealt with unnecessary items in my previous post to highlight that unnecessary items may still support innovation or positive disruption.1 You know that context matters a lot to me.2 Deciding whether a thing is necessary or not is manly a matter of context. If you produce computers, you may think that partnering with a private telecommunications company is unnecessary because its clients have no interest in computers. This is true. You may also think that a partnership with a private telecommunications company makes sense because you want their clients to use your computers as phones and private telecommunications companies often provide their clients with phones. This is true and disruptive because the computer that probably is in your pocket is a simulacrum of phone.3 Probability is not certainty since I do not wish to use any smartphone and deal with artificial intelligence.
Putting a web browser in a pocket by partnering with private telecommunications companies may not seem obvious and is sensible. Such a move requires to connect obvious items differently: the web browser, the computer, the phone, and the private telecommunications company. The first two items are obviously connected. The connection between the phone and the company that gives access to the telecommunication network is obvious as well. The connection between the phone and the computer is less obvious although computers can send data to each other over a phone network. What makes this connection less obvious is that it is not a network issue but a marketing one. Network infrastructure and marketing are two different contexts. The phone is a node that can be used to move from one context to another; it is a game changer.
Open source is really interesting from this perspective because it enables hackers who have not been educated in law to understand that doing something with a piece of software is more important than having the legal title to it. Lawyers who have not come across software issues may not fear to lose exclusive enjoyment to a piece of land that they own because someone else carried out extensive works on it.4 This issue may seem far-fetched in trust and estates but often occurs in the open-source world where a major contributor to a project takes possession of it, especially when at least part of this project depends on an infrastructure owned by this major contributor.5 Now the artificial intelligence can process anything automatically, talent pays less and less.6. Using artificial intelligence gives more value to the efficiency of the frameworks than to people. Why would one value people if one focuses on eradicating nonstandard behaviour? Is there any room left for talent? Graphs can help to notice the location of nodes such as possession in the context of real estate or software although they are overshadowed by concepts such as the legal title or the software license. Recalculating graphs enables one to notice ongoing trends in various contexts.
In brief, when it comes to digital assets, it’s worth asking yourself the following question: what can I possess without owning it?
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See Possession dynamics. ↩
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See Heavy and soft, esp. at 2. ↩