Open Source Course

David at OpenContent.org made a post about a course at Berkeley called InfoSys 296A-2 / Law276.8 Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information: Technical, Economic, Social, and Legal Perspectives. The above site has podcasts of the lectures. I'm still not sure what I think about podcasting, but that's probably because I have actually tried it (even as a listener). I suppose I should see about getting the Mac and iTunes going again. Until then, though, the course Web site may be more useful.

There are some interesting links on the syllabus. The ones about Wikipedia I find especially interesting today. Jaron Lanier has a piece called Digital Maoism: Hazards of the Collective Mind that talks about how Wikipedia is dangerous because it makes people's work anonymous and, he argues, it's important to know who said what. When people copy and paste text from elsewhere into Wikipedia, he goes on to say, it makes both texts less valuable. There are also some responses to his take, but I haven't gotten around to reading them yet.