Open Source and interdisciplinary convergence

In the previous article, I talked about tribes.  The groups that we form or join, for one
purpose or another.  Whether it be comfort, safety, growth, we form or join tribes that benefit ourselves, at the very least.

That sounds selfish perhaps, yet if we look at life as simply self and species preservation, it is reasonable to consider that there is a very distinct and deep need to be selfish.  To a point.

While technology may one day provide everyone the ability to individually ensure the continuation of our species, even without needing a partner to do so, we still, also have a need to form at least a familial tribe, have children, protect them, and teach them, allowing them to duplicate what we have done.

That simple idea, that we do need others to grow, speaks directly to the core of what interdisciplinary convergence is all about.  Has our trend to become more and more narrow in our thinking and purpose put us all at risk of our own extinction?


Of course the quick answer to that sensational question would likely be, "Of course not".  But perhaps the question touches on some very real concerns and a possible outcome.

In the early '90s, I attended a number of interdisciplinary conferences and was blown away by how discussions regarding a specific question, such as chaos and fractals, had much further reach than just being of interest to math and physics realms.  It was of interest to architecture, music, computer science, electronics, video, archaeology, and many other disciplines.

Even more interesting of course, was that these diverse disciplines were able to share thoughts and ideas and experiments with others which in turn helped them further develop their theories and solve problems.  For me, the biggest take away was realizing that thinking outside of "the box" and sharing outside our circle of interest was a really good thing.

Lets use a car company as an example.

The "standard" car system was developed in the early 1900s.  It comprises of a body, an engine, and a drive train.  For all intents and purposes, our cars are exactly the same now, as they were a century ago.  But in the late '70s, we had a problem.  We realized our cars were using too much gas.  Until this became a problem, our engines were getting bigger and more powerful and used more and more gas.

So, engine makers began to look at solving the problem and ultimately came to a realization.  They could not reduce gas consumption beyond a point.  An engine was physically as efficient as it could be.  Finally, it was realized that focusing on the engine itself, could not solve the problem.  Instead, they needed to look to other disciplines to solve the problem.  Chemistry provided a more efficient fuel and more viscous lubricating fluids.  Physics and Chemistry solved the problem of better tire compounds and proper pneumatic inflation.  Architecture, engineering, mathematicians and physics solved the drag co-efficient.  The point being, it took a lot of different disciplines and changes to many different systems to solve the fuel efficiency.  It wasn't just an engine problem.

While there are plenty of discussions revolving around whether or not there is man made climate change and that cars are a significant factor of that, if we were to assume that were true, and we did not solve our efficiency, it could eventually lead to a nuclear winter and the extinction of life on our planet.

If we don't look beyond our own, narrow scopes to solve problems, we may never solve certain problems.  We may not even know there's a problem to solve.  And even

more importantly, we wouldn't know that maybe there's a correlation to our problem in another area of focus, and that we can work together to solve each other's problems.

Maybe like Pandora's Box, we are looking at and doing things that are best left alone.  Yet, we can't have innovation and progress if we don't do something new and better.  And as that progress is happening faster and faster, we would probably be much better served if we shared ideas so that more and more people could not just be aware of problems, but that they might be able to work on them at the speeds that are much more in tune with advancements.

For many centuries we have focused on divergence and specialization.  Open Source mind sets have brought to light that the more we converge, share and work together, even if individually we diverge and specialize, the world can become a much better place.