http://open.salon.com/blog/wayne_gallant/2009/01/22/open_source_the_innovation_behind_the_internet



Many of the Internet's core technologies were created to facilitate free and easy information sharing among peers. This always included two-way and multicast communication so that information could not only be distributed efficiently, but also evaluated collaboratively.


In the 1990s, many of these platforms were overshadowed by the emergence of the WordWideWeb. Tim Berners-Lee's foundational work on web standards was guided by a vision of peer collaboration among scientists distributed across the globe [4].



The culture of the Internet as a whole has been changing. The spirit of free sharing that characterized the early days is increasingly being challenged by commodity-oriented control structures which have traditionally dominated the content industries.




The range of technologies are as wide as the range of communities, and a close relationship exists between the two. Technologies open and close possibilities in the same sense that social communities do. As Lawrence Lessig pointed out, what code is to the online world, architecture is to the physical world [19]. The way we live and the structures in which we live are deeply related. The culture of technology increasingly becomes the culture of our society.



The more homogenous the mainstream media becomes, the more room opens up for alternatives. And if these alternatives are to be viable, then they must not be limited to alternative content, but must also explore the structure of their production. This is the promise and potential of OS-INT.