Assessment of Opening Sources (WG12,B)

For those who are unaware or cannot remember, “Opening Sources” is an interactive hypertext on the internet which features a poem, permanently available to be altered by anonymous authors. People are allegedly encouraged to improve the poem with their contributive configurations, but as one would have surmised, the text has been distorted into a barely cohesive mess over the years consisting of conjoined fragments of randomness. There are no traces left of the text which originally served as the template for people to interact with when the writing process was initiated in the year of 2008, and as an inevitable consequence fabricated by the perks of anonymity, the text has also been subjected to a great deal of perversion associated with obscenity. Although this observation could also have been derived from many other dark corners of the internet, such as Youtube where highly offensive remarks are blurted out in the comment section frequently, “Open Sources” has exemplified how the infestation of obscenity will ooze out of people's minds when they are granted the opportunity to do so with no fear of reprisals. There is no sense of collaboration to detect between the authors and people are seemingly more inclined to modify the text with minor alterations meant to produce a giggle, rather than putting time and effort into creating something intellectually stimulating and worthwhile. Even if one deviant author was lucky enough to access the poem at a moment where there would be no interference and possessed by the aspiration to write anything meaningful, it would only be a matter of time before someone else appeared to thwart the respectable intention. Nothing is carved in stone at “Opening Sources”, and when power is distributed to all, the subject is condemned to remain mired in chaos.