GID overview

["BricolabsNet"] > ["GID"]
 
'''Background'''
 
Increasingly, the most successful players in the information industry are creating information systems rather than stand-alone devices. These systems incorporate media, digital devices, networks, computing protocols, legal regimes, and public and private organizations in order to create closed socio-technical infrastructures that provide a seemless experience of information delivery and consumption. Designers have begun to recognize the importance of system approaches. Examples include Frog Design’s Alan Richardson saying,‘the system is the product’ and Peter Coughlan, practice leader of the “transforming by design” group at IDEO has repeatedly emphasized processes and practices in the work of his group since 2001. More recently, in 2005, Hilary Cottam, director of the UK Design Council's RED unit, was awarded the title "Designer of the Year" by the Design Museum, London. The work that was cited as the reason for her award involved the results she has had transforming the ways the UK public interacts with systems, services, organisations and policies.
 
The most famous example of the success of a systems approach to design is the iPod and iTunes system developed by Apple. Recently, Adaptive Path’s Peter Merholz  has made the product/system link explicit:
 
"The iPod is a product, but it succeeds only because of how it works within a system…The iTunes software is the key to the success of the system. It allows the iPod to be a successful product, because it offloads the bulk of functionality to the PC, which is better suited to handle it…But it doesn’t stop there. Apple truly cinched the deal when it opened the iTunes Music Store. Now you could fill your iPod with all manner of media, listening or watching it wherever you wanted to. The iPod device isn’t a product in and of itself so much as it is an interface to this larger system…” (http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2006/09/29/stop-designing-products/)
 
However, in this quote Merholz doesn’t mention three aspects of the iPod system that also contribute to its seemlessness and its success. These are namely, the almost total control of iPod hardware, software, and peripherals that Apple maintains, the Digital Rights Management software and protocols that allow Apple to extend control to the media files themselves, and the legal regimes (such as the DCMA in the US) that provide the means for Apple to discipline those that break their controls.
 
It is important to note that our work is not aimed at breaking or “hacking” the software and hardware standards created by companies like Apple, or in directly contravening the goals of legal regimes like the DMCA. The iPod example shows the value of developing media distribution as a closed system that includes, social, technical, and legal structures. We certainly do not believe that this value is garnered only by Apple corporation or its shareholders. Many individuals benefit from the seemlessness of using iPods and iTunes to purchase, download, and experience music and video. However, we also believe that experimenting with alternative open systems and models is a technically as well as socially beneficial task. If one goal of the “generic information infrastructures” project is to find new ways to intervene in the closed information systems that are being developed, it is important to include hardware in the equation. In order to discover new models of social and technical innovation and to establish new globally distributed relationships between diverse groups and individuals, it is vital to develop test beds of alternative information infrastructures that include hardware and software. While the creation of software is well in hand, the development of open hardware is a missing piece: therefore we propose the development of an open information hardware framework that various groups can rework, modify, and localize for their particular purpose. What we call the GID will extend open source software, open wireless protocols, and other open standards with a new open hardware test bed for information devices. GID overview''' '''