Space Elevator Wiki and Software Wars

I’m very remiss / late in posting this…

Longtime Space Elevator enthusiast, Keith Curtis, the owner / maintainer of the Space Elevator Wiki website has also created a publication entitled “Software Wars”.  From the website:

“The average computer user is unaware there is a war for freedom going on that will determine the path of modern society. Software Wars is a movie about the battle for our right to share technology and ideas. Your phone is perfectly happy to add zero + zero billions of times per second, all day long. The shiny hardware gets the love, but software is the magic behind it all.

The software we need will not be “owned” by corporations like Microsoft, Apple, and Google, who are mostly impeding technological progress. (Google supports efforts such as Linux via Android, but their AI code in Google Now, language translation and driverless cars are not built in an open way.)

This software will be built by a global community, taking on problems too big for any one company or team to even understand. We should have been working together all along, but it is necessary now for the few big problems that remain.

Greater use of free software and the ideas in this movie will lead to faster progress on the Linux desktop, improve the way children learn math, finally build computers that think, decode DNA, and more. The movie’s experts explain what is possible, and the audience decides what happens.”

Keith is trying to crowdsource the funding of turning his publication into a movie.  You can see the trailer, below, visit the Indiegogo funding site here, and read/view an interview with Keith here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1evxMedow4[/youtube]

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Keith states that the movie will have “…a number of minutes about the space elevator…” – there are just a couple of days left in the fundraising campaign – good luck Keith!

One thought on “Space Elevator Wiki and Software Wars

  1. Gary Nugent

    Interesting idea. Apple have always been close-minded about their software and it’s that proprietary nature that has made me steer clear of their products (plus they’re overpriced).

    Google have been becoming evil over the last few years, making some very questionable business decisions and operating on the “we’ll seek forgiveness rather then permission” paradigm. Look at how they scooped up info from open WiFi connections without seeking permission and when caught out basically said “oops, sorry, we didn’t mean to do that”.

    And now Google are facing fines in Europe over the introduction of the all-in-one privacy policy they introduced last year to cover all their properties without disclosing how the information collected from users would be used to Google’s gain (targeted advertising, profiling users, selling info to third parties, etc).

    Google are not there for the good of its users. They’re there to serve the bottom line and pay big dividends to shareholders. They sold their soul when they floated on the stock exchange. So anything they develop will be developed in a way that best serves the company and not mankind. Microsoft and Apple are at least honest to the extent that people are made aware that they are businesses built for profit. Google still sells itself (misleadingly) as a service for the people. WordPress is an example of a successful open-source software project as is Linux to some extent. Like yourselves, I’d like to see more of this type of software out in the world.

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