It is my impression that aspiring musicians ravish the opportunity to open for another band that they idolize. I felt similarly when Alicia Gibb called me and asked if I would do a talk directly following the keynote at the Open Hardware Summit by four of the five Arduino dudes. What to fun to share the stage with these Open Hardware celebrities!
My talk was titled “Edges, Openings, and In-Betweens”. While I’ve dabbling in Open Hardware, as is often the case with my work I am just as attracted to the overarching concepts tied to the movement as the details of how it is put into practice. In addition to talking a bit about my own work and my use of open hardware within academia, I also spoke a bit about what it means to be open. Where does the object end and the idea begin? What are the all different levels on which these things are open?
My favorite word of the day was “thingness”, specifically referring to what it means to be a thing and when a thing goes beyond a thing. Arduino is a good example to start with, as the team cites it as being 3 things: hardware, software, and a community. I wonder how our consideration of things and their porosity will develop as the open movement continues…
