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Jan 19, 2010
Analysis

Open Source Transit

Post by admin

In the past, your technology was successful if you designed something, marketed it, sold it and people bought it. People used your technology the way you told them to use it and that was that.

Then along came things like the internet, Google, the iPhone, WordPress and Web 2.0 and all that changed. Instead of trying to control their technologies, companies started enabling the public to participate in the development and creation of new technologies and their various off-shoots. This change occurred very recently and the majority of manufacturers, technologies and engineers are still stuck in the ‘old way’ of doing things.

Subways, streetcars and buses are like those old software and computer programs we grew up with: There is only one way to use them and it’s the way the manufacturer dictates. Take two seconds and try and think of as many different configurations of our traditional transit technologies as you can. I bet you can’t think of more than three.

Cable on the other hand, is not like those traditional transit technologies. Cable is flexible. Cable allows the creator the freedom to imagine a whole world of transit possibilities grounded in a few simple rules. Understand those rules (the Source Code of Cable), and you can do virtually anything.

Anyone familiar with computer programming or has just a fleeting understanding of the new web, has encountered this concept before. It’s called Open Source and is a philosophy of production that promotes access to the end product’s source materials. Doing so, turns users into creators.

Cable is Open Source Transit. Cable provides the Source Code while others imagine the possibilities that Code presents.

Learn about it, remix it, dream it, build it. It’s just that simple.

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