Participatory Media, Open Source, and Android

Wired’s July issue has a fantastic piece regarding the “gPhone” and the Android OS, which really got me thinking about the endless possibilities of an open source platform. The article is titled “Google's Open Source Android Phone Will Free the Wireless Web.”

Google has always been a company about software, not hardware. So when Andy Rubin, the mind behind Google owned Android says there won’t be a gPhone, there will be hundreds, I didn’t bat an eye. But will other key web players follow suit?

The Internet is evolving into participatory media, more and more with each day. There are constantly conversations going on about the Semantic Web, Web 2.0, 3.0 and so forth, yet few companies have come out with a tangible plan to make this future an actuality. Not to say that the change will happen overnight, but I genuinely feel we are getting closer and closer to the technical reality of a personalized web space. And to me, an open source platform is the key to allowing for constant innovation and collaboration. To quote from the piece, “Google wants developers to write programs that draw swaths of users, which in turn attract more developers.” Call me a traditionalist, but I want to believe we are all in this evolution together, and that the Web becomes better and better when smart minds get into a room and talk it out, (or punch it out when necessary).

Even if Apple’s Kleiner- Perkins fund for iPhone app developers allows a some engineering nerds the chance to make a dynamic map software system on my phone, can it really compete with the pssibility of a truly open source platform?