COSI 'Open' Technology and Solutions: 2015

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Finally Shutting Down

The War is Over! Open Technology and Solutions are now embraced everywhere. So, it's time for COSI 'Open' Technology & Solutions News and web sites to fade away. This will be our last issue. Thank you, everyone, for your support over the past decade..

For well over 10-15 years, the battles between 'open' vs. 'closed' solutions have raged. It started with free and 'open source' software (FOSS) solutions, then moved on to 'open standards', 'open access', 'open data', 'open architecture', ... It started in the technology sector, then spread into education, healthcare, manufacturing, government and just about every other component of the public and private sector. It became more than just about technology, it became a broad, global movement that supports the adoption of 'open culture' and 'open societies' around the world. Many individuals, corporations, and countries will continue to battle and fight against the 'open movement' for years to come, not recognizing that the war is over - all 'closed' systems will succumb to 'open solutions' as we move into the future. - Peter Groen

Monday, November 2, 2015

All COSITech.Net Sites to Shut Down on December 31, 2015

Collaboration, 'Open' Solutions, and Innovation (COSI)

For well over 10-15 years, the battles between 'open' vs. 'closed' solutions have raged. It started with free and 'open source' software (FOSS) solutions, then moved on to 'open standards', 'open access', 'open data', 'open architecture', ... 'Open' solutions started in the technology sector, then spread into education, healthcare, manufacturing, government and just about every other component of the public and private sector. It became more than just about technology, it became a broad, global movement that supports the adoption of 'open culture' and 'open societies' around the world. Many individuals, corporations, and countries will continue to battle and fight against the 'open movement' for years to come, not recognizing that the war is over - all 'closed' systems will succumb to 'open solutions' as we move into the future.

So, after almost 10 years, all COSITech.Net web sites, blogging sites, news sites, and social media sites will shut down at the end of the year. This includes our popular online COSI 'Open' Technology & Solutions Weekly News site. I'd like to thank the many tens of thousands of visitors that took the time to visit the site and read our blogs over the years. I like to think that to some degree, we all have helped change the world for the better.

Thanks,

Peter Groen
CEO, COSITech.Net

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Government and Society in the U.S. and Around the World by 2050

We all ought to take some time to consider what the world in which we live will look like in 2050 and beyond. I know I do, since my kids, grandkids, and great grandkids will hopefully be around then and well into the 22^nd century.

The following is a brief collection of predictions about Government and Society in 2050 that you might find interesting. These predictions were extracted from multiple reports and studies by groups around the world focused on the future of America and this planet.

So here goes! Expect the following predictions and/or future scenarios to become a reality over the next few decades:

The vast majority of countries will have adopted some form of democratic government.
The U.S. will learn to work more closely with new partners around the world to reinvent regional and global governance systems.
Building leadership in government and business that can be 'trusted', that is not corrupt, is citizen-centered, and not built on greed and the quest for money and power... will continue to be a major challenge for society.
Many Non-State actors will take the lead from government in confronting global challenges, e.g. global business conglomerates.
Public and Private sector organizations will learn to shift their focus from short-term to long-term investments and solutions
Governments and institutions will have learned to better adapt fast enough to harness change and new technologies, instead of being overwhelmed by it
It is predicted that the global population will be close to 10 billion by 2050, barring any one of several expected major pandemics or major extinction events.
Global population levels will finally have reached a plateau by 2050 with one in every six people on earth being over 65 years old.
While many industrialized countries in Europe face projected population losses in the coming decades, the U.S. is poised for tremendous growth, fueled by legal and illegal immigration.
The Southern and Western regions of the U.S. will lead the nation’s population growth, while vast regions of the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Lower Mississippi Valley will experience flat or declining population growth.
Over 60% of the world’s population will live in very large urban 'smart' cities.
By 2050, the caucasian race will become a minority in the U.S. This will alter key policies and practices of U.S. political parties, the Republican Party in particular.
Women will continue to take on a growing leadership in business and government, ... in the U.S. and around the world.
By 2050, it is predicted that 30 per cent (2.8 billion) of the world's population will identify themselves as Muslim compared to 31 per cent (2.9 billion) identifying themselves as Christian. Religion will remain a key source of conflict in the world.
Homosexual discrimination will have largely been eradicated in the U.S. and many other parts of the world.
There will be continued progress towards the eradication of global poverty levels that currently exist in poverty stricken areas of the world.
The importance of Personal Privacy will remain a high priority for people everywhere as business and government continue to actively infringe on this area of life.
The bad news in healthcare is that skyrocketing global population will spur the faster spread of infectious diseases and viruses and more instances of major global pandemics.
The good news is that the rise of Predictive Medicine, Regenerative Medicine, Genetic Engineering, Stem Cell Research, Telehealth, Robotics, and other innovative healthcare solutions will help transform and significantly lower healthcare costs - making current discussions of healthcare policy and funding irrelevent.
The official end of the 'Oil Age' and use of fossil fuels on Earth will occur by 2050. This will cause a major shift in the current balance of economic power in the world.
There will be widespread emergence and use of a range of new and renewable energy sources, e.g. wind, solar, hydro, nuclear fusion, fuel cell.
Both the high cost and scarcity of energy on Earth will be a thing of the past.
Average global temperatures will have risen by more than 4°F by 2050. The resultant climate change will make storms hitting the U.S. far more intense, e.g. hurricanes, tornados, cyclones.
Sea levels across the globe will rise by a little over 3 feet, flooding many coastal cities and areas in the U.S. and around the world.
Approximately 5 billion of the world's projected 10 billion people will live in water-stressed and food-scarce areas leading to the potential of mass migrations and regional conflicts.
It will be highly unlikely that war will go extinct, though its frequency and scope will continue to change and adapt to the changing global environment.
There will not be any single hegemonic or dominant global power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multi-polar world.
Rapid changes and shifts in power may ultimately lead to more intra-state and inter-state conflicts in many regions around the globe.
The continued increase in instances of Cyber Attacks and Cyber Warfare by government entities around the world will remain a major challenge.
There will be widespread increase in the use of fully autonomous, semi-intelligent military weapons, e.g. drones, robots.
Development of a wide range of new weapon systems - see YouTube video on Future Weapons
Language translation technology will improve global business and inter-personal communications.
Many other new technological breakthroughs will be developed just in time to solve many of the challenges and problems facing the U.S. and the world, e.g. over-population, rapid urbanization, climate change, energy, food shortages, water needs, space travel, ...
Spaceflight technology will take a major leap forward allowing for Inter-Planetary travel across our Solar System.
Both public and private sector organizations will be aggressively moving forward to explore and exploit resources on nearby planets in outer-space
There will be the first permanent human settlements on the moon and Mars by 2050. Governance of these and other Intra-planetary bodies in our Solar System will be a major issue.

You might want to re-read the predictions above again - with more care.

What else do you think will happen by 2050? What does all this mean to you? Our government? Society? ...

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Shifting the Focus to 'Open Society' and 'Open Culture'

HOT NEWS - The War is Over: Open Source and the Open Way have Won. The growing global Open Movement has now shifted its focus to Open Culture and Open Society.

For well over 10-15 years, the battles between 'open' vs. 'closed' solutions have raged. It started with free and 'open source' software (FOSS) solutions, then moved on to 'open standards', 'open access', 'open data', 'open architecture', ... The Open Movement started in the technology sector, then spread into education, healthcare, manufacturing, government and just about every other component of the public and private sector. It became more than just about technology, it became a broad, global movement that supports the adoption of 'open culture' and 'open societies' around the world. Many individuals, corporations, and countries will continue to battle and fight against the 'open movement' for years to come, not recognizing that the war is over - all 'closed' systems will eventually succumb to 'open solutions' as we move into the future.

To give you a better feel for what we're talking about, the following are a selection of recent articles focused on 'Open Culture' and 'Open Society' that have been published over the past few months. They cover a wide gamut of interesting topics.

Open Culture - A growing social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works. The movement objects to over-restrictive copyright laws that restrict the free exchange of creative ideas and works.
Open Society - In open societies, citizens are encouraged to engage in critical thinking, facilitated by cultural and legal institutions that support the concepts of freedom and tolerance of diverse individual, groups, ideas, and beliefs.

Please Share any other good articles you have run across that are focused on Open Culture and Open Society with our readers.

Understanding 'Open' Terminology Today

Having heard so many people using the terms “open systems”, “open computing”, “open source”, and “open access” interchangeably, believing they all mean the same thing, it seemed appropriate to write a short blog defining some of these terms and soliciting input on other ‘open’ terminology.

In general, the term “Open” often refers to initiatives whose inner workings are exposed to the public and are capable of being further modified or improved by any qualified individual or organization. “Open” is the opposite of “proprietary” or “closed” environments. In the case of software, this would mean that the “source code” is either open for all to access such as the Linux operating system or closed systems such as MS Windows where only Microsoft programmers are able to change the source code.

Other ‘open’ terminology often loosely bandied about include:

Open Source Software (OSS) - OSS refers to a software program in which the source code is available to anyone for use. It can be modified by anyone from its original design free of up-front license fees. The source code is available for review, modification, and sharing by the at-large community. It is also often referred to as Free & Open Source Software (FOSS).
Open Standards - The set of specifications developed to define interoperability between diverse systems. The standards are owned and maintained by a vendor-neutral organization rather than by a specific commercial developer.
Open Systems - Hardware and/or software systems that use or adhere to open architecture and standards that support interoperable to some degree. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_systems
Open Architecture - An Information Technology (IT) architecture whose specifications are open and available to the public and that provide a platform that enables continued evolution and interoperability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_architecture
Open Access - Providing free and unrestricted access to journal articles, research findings, books, and other literature. See http://www.soros.org/openaccess
Open Data – Data that anyone is free to use, reuse and redistribute without restriction. For more detail, see http://opendefinition.org.
Open Data Format - A standard way for describing data formats, per the “Open Data Format Initiative (ODFI)”, and a program to validate that a data file is “ODFI compliant”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
Open Community - An environment in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is loosely coordinated into large, meaningful collaborative projects and generally avoids the traditional closed organization structure many are used to seeing in the private sector.
Open Computing - This is a general term used to describe an “open” philosophy in building information technology (IT) systems. It represents the principle that includes architecture and technology procurement policies and practices that align IT with the goals of an open interoperable computer systems environment.
Open Knowledge - An open system of knowledge transfer using the Internet and other information technologies to share best practices, emerging practices, knowledge and innovations within one or more “Community of Practice (CoP)” or across organizational boundaries. Visit http://okfn.org
Open Publication License (OPL) - This is a license used for creating free and open publications created by the Open Content Project. Other alternatives include the Creative Commons licenses, the GNU Free Documentation License and the Free Art License. See http://opencontent.org/openpub/
Open Source Hardware - Hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the hardware based on that ‘open’ design. See http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW

HOT NEWS - The War is Over: Open Source has Won. The growing global Open Movement has shifted its focus to Open Culture and Open Society.

We are now seeing the emergence of new, related terms like 'Open Movement', ‘Open Culture’ and ‘Open Society’ as more people and organizations around the world adopt ‘open’ technologies and solutions and embrace the philosophy behind them. They are defined as:

Open Movement - A broad-reaching social movement that has slowly grown in scope and strength over the past decades to become a major force helping to reshape the world we live in, the way we do business, and improving healthcare being provided to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. The movement now encompasses open source, open access, open data, open standards, open hardware, as well as open business models, open government, open leadership, and much more.
Open Culture - A growing social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works. The movement objects to over-restrictive copyright laws that restrict the free exchange of creative ideas and works.
Open Society - In open societies, citizens are encouraged to engage in critical thinking, facilitated by cultural and legal institutions that support the concepts of freedom and tolerance of diverse individual, groups, ideas, and beliefs.

Have you heard some other ‘open’ terminology being used that you can take a shot at defining and share with us?

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

'Open' Education & Training Update - March 2015

Looking over the recent news items posted about free and 'open source' Education solutions, the following items caught my attention which might also be of interest to you. For example:

For more information on 'Open Education' Technology and Solutions, check out the COSI 'Open' Education web site and share what you find with others as you see fit.

* BTW - What do you know about Linus Torvald, Linux and the Global 'Open' Movement? Take a few minutes and view the following YouTube Video

Monday, March 16, 2015

Open Source & Healthcare Recent News Items - March 2015

Looking over the recent news items posted about 'open source' healthcare solutions, the following items caught my attention which might also be of interest to you.

There were a number of items related to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) plans to acquire a new 'proprietary' electronic health record (EHR) system at an estimated cost in excess of $11 billion. They make for some interesting reading and raise a lot of questions for Congress to pursue.

Pentagon's $11 Billion Healthcare Record System Will Be Obsolete Before It's Even Built

How the DOD's choice of an EHR system will impact Other Healthcare Providers

DoD's electronic health record won't be open source, given last minute contract changes

US Defense Think Tank Calls for DoD to Adopt Open Source VistA EHR versus Closed Proprietary EHR

Closed Medical Records, EHR Decertification and the DoD

On other fronts, several new 'open source' health IT solutions and recent news stories that are also worth exploring include:

Apple unveils OpenSource Software to improve Health research

OPENPediatrics open sources Medical Diagrams and Animations

The developer of OpenSNP is the Mark Zuckerberg of 'OpenSource' Genetics

British National Health Service (NHS) Open Source Movement Gathers Pace

Finally, you might want to revisit the article “Another Look at Healthcare & Health IT thru 2040”

COSI 'Open' Technology and Solutions Blogs

This new Collaboration, Open Solutions & Innovation (COSI) site contains blogs on 'open source', 'open access', 'open data', 'open standards', 'open hardware', 'open culture', and more. The blogs generally relate how these 'open' technologies and solutions can be used in Healthcare, Education, Government, Manufacturing, and many other potential areas of interest.

This new COSI blogging site replace the following ones that were recently discontinued:

COSI 'Open' Technology and Solutions