Social impact of Open source.
I recently read an interesting story about an open source voice recognition program. Not only is this a terrific idea I think it stirs ideas of what else could be accomplished via open source.
This Open Source Speech Recognition Engine collects voice recording and their transciptions, and converts them into a sort of usable data for recognition. Why is it so important that this is open source? first being open source those submitting are equally benifited as those creating the project. This is because as soon as the voice data is compiled into the program it is made avaible to the public for free. The user has givin input into a project that benifits them also. Usually if a company like microsoft was making such a program there would be a worker boss relationship, with a monetary exchange. however thanks to open source this is more of a community good. It may seem like that error that pops up when windows crashes to some. “please submit this error so that we can make windows better.” However in the case of windows you are submitting to make the product that you purchased better… or make the next product that you will have to buy better. however with open source you benifit the product that you receive, and in turn the technology benifits. The user determines how the technology works.
What are the possibilities of this outside the realm of this project. I could imagine user submitted data for all sorts of projects with social importance. Data collected for pictures of your town to be compiled into a full 3 dimensional representation of the town.
Or perhaps something more useful as user submitted data to a program that could tell you average walk times to and from certain areas around a college campus.
I think the most important thing here is that this user input into a program can help the program to reach further than that of a commercial prouduct. A commercial product is limited by its budget and there for can only collect data in proportion to revenue. Where as this open source alternative while dependant on having people willingly submit, is not bound by monetary balance.