Taming a Disruptive Technology:
Open Source, America's Army, and the Military-Entertainment
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Abstract:
In 1995 Id Software took the unprecedented step of making the proprietary
code for its extremely popular computer game, Quake, freely available
on the Internet. A vibrant culture of game enthusiasts who were already
hacking modifications of games, so-called "mods", and sharing
them over the Internet were suddenly transformed from outlaws to share
holders in the industry. Rather than destroying profitability as feared,
mod culture actually infused such new life into the computer game industry
that the most successful game companies have not only accommodated modders
but actually made them part of the business plan. The most successful
company to have adopted this strategy and tamed the potentially disruptive
"computer mod" is America's Army. The case offers material for
reflection on the co-evolution of culture and technology.
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Biography
Timothy Lenoir is professor of history and chair of the Program in History and
Philosophy of Science at Stanford University. Lenoir is the author of The Strategy
of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology, Dordrecht
and Boston: D. Reidel, 1982; paperback edition by the University of Chicago Press,
1989, which examines the development of non-Darwinian theories of evolution, particularly
in the German context during the nineteenth century. His other books include:
Politik im Tempel der Wissenschaft: Forschung und Machtausübung im deutschen
Kaiserreich, Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1992; Instituting Science: The Cultural
Production of Scientific Disciplines, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997,
a volume which examines the formation of disciplines and the role of public institutions
in the construction of scientific knowledge; an edited volume, Inscribing Science:
Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication, appeared in spring 1998
from Stanford Press.
Lenoir is currently engaged in an investigation of the introduction of computers
into biomedical research from the early 1960s through the 1990s, particularly
the development of computer graphics, medical visualization technology, the
development of virtual reality and its application in surgery. With funding
from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Lenoir constructed two web projects on
the history of human computer
interaction and on the history
of bioinformatics. Lenoir has been a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim
Foundation and twice a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin.
He is the co-founder and editor of the Stanford University Press series, Writing
Science. Lenoir was named Bing
Fellow for Excellence in Teaching 1998-2001.
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