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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Bubble Hotties: The Problem With Open Source Love

filed under: Web Sex Index, Bubble Hotties by Lux Nightmare

The bubble — (blogging about) it’s so hot right now. As the bubble (or, hopefully, not-a-bubble) grows, so too, does the collective hotness of the web and its makers. Here Sexerati tracks the ways web development and erotic development complement and complicate one another for those profiting from the web, and for those who fuck them.

The open source movement has revolutionized the way we think about life. It’s a simple idea, really: the more we know about the software around us, the more we’re allowed to look at its code and explore how it works, the better able we are to detect and fix bugs, to improve and enhance said software. An increased exchange of information benefits us all.

The open source ethic began with software, but the concept is fairly applicable to all areas of life – and given the high priority our culture gives to things like honesty and communication, it would seem only natural to apply open source philosophy to our relationships as well: but have we really gotten to the point where it’s possible?

I want, very much, to live an open source life. I want to show you my source code, I want to publicize my dev log, I want you to be aware of all the queries I’m running, of all the information that’s being posted to my database.

I want to be upfront, open, and honest within my relationships: and we all give lip service to the idea that this is what we want, too. But at the end of the day, it’s not. At the end of the day, in spite of all our clamoring for the free exchange of knowledge, in our intimate relationships, there seems to be such a thing as too much information.

The problem with trying to open source our hearts is that – unlike with our favorite applications – there is so much weight, so many value judgments, associated with the experiences, with the information, that lies within. Learning a program’s source code doesn’t carry the same apprehension as learning how someone feels about you; it doesn’t inspire the same insecurity that comes with learning that a partner has had a threesome/is more sexually experienced than you/has been with someone better in bed.

We want the free exchange of information between our partners and ourselves: but we’re not stable, not secure enough to really handle it. We’re too afraid that an open exchange of information will lead to the exploitation of our flaws, a devastating awareness of our bugs and insecurities and problems. And rather than giving in to the open source ethos, rather than buying the philosophy that an open acknowledgement of our issues allows us to repair them; we hide away, shielding ourselves from the potential pain of being rejected for being too honest.

So where do we go from here? It’s so easy to give up, to abandon hope of living up to our ideals. But before we do that, maybe we should take some time to open source ourselves – to run support applications to repair our damage, to heal the corrupted data within our hearts and make ourselves okay again. It’s not the open source model that’s damaged: it’s us. And if we want to live up to our ideals, to forge our way to a more perfect society, we have to confront the damage at the root and work to rebuild and repair and move on.

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