3 The Fallacy of “Open” (3/24) -- Open at the Margins

3 The Fallacy of “Open” sava saheli singh [This is the text (and slides) of the presentation I gave at the HASTAC 2015 conference in East Lansing in May 2015. Please note that many links will take you directly to a pdf of the article referenced.] Open has been a popular concept and approach to many things from open data and open science, to open education. Yet, this shift to open as a democratizing or accessible approach to education often lacks critical interrogation. My work and public scholarship over the past 5 years has centered on digital citizenship, trust, and surveillance, and this piece assesses some ideas and questions about what we think of as “open” and what we’re meant to think of as “open” and the ramifications of both of these positions. This piece was written in 2015, and a lot has changed since then, but these considerations remain important to any project that wants to be open. —— A note about my slides: I asked my Twitter community to tell me what “open” meant to them, and I will be showing some of those responses. Apologies to those whose tweets were not included here. All tweets were used with permission. —— There are some commonly used concepts in the “open” world: - Open access: is access to scholarly work, freeing it from being behind paywalls. - Open source: is free access to software and hardware, increasing potential for collaborative programming and creating hardware components. - Open data: is free access to data, making it easier for the public to potentially understand larger patterns in specific contexts, and increasing transparency in use of said data. - Open content: is free access to online content for reuse, revision, remix, and redistribution. Open in all these contexts talks about access to rather than a way of being, but when we partake in any of these contexts, we’re often expected to be open. We can already see the built-in divides and the somewhat misleading implication of “access”. For example, open data implies access to certain kinds of data, but without knowledge of how to use that data or what to do with it, it being “open” is of little use to us. —— When “they” created the internet, and I’m simplifying things a little here, it was with a view to creating an open and democratic space which would allow for the free exchange of ideas. While this is one of the things that happened, sadly, it’s not the only thing that happened. We reminisce about the “good old days of the internet” which was about 15 years ago, when things seemed simpler and friendlier, and now we reminisce about the social media of 5 years ago, when things seemed simpler and friendlier. 5 years! That isn’t even a blip in time! —— So what is the difference between social media, then and now? The number of people? The kinds of conversations? The features of the platforms? Being able to talk about the good old days of social media is in itself a privilege. We yearn for the days when our privilege meant we had a particular kind of access t