Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite the ongoing development of free software and despite its availability
through directories such as
the free software directory
, there are still a lot of people
and enterprises that are slaves of privative software. This is caused mainly for two
reasons. Firstly, because of piracy, which, as Bill Gates stated, has permitted him to
reach a large long-term market, avoiding users from using free open-source soft-
ware (Chopra and Dexter
2011
). Secondly, privative software is used and promoted
in the context of formal education. Sadly, we can fi nd on the net syllabus of master
courses that base its signifi cance on the learning of a privative software package.
During the academic course 2011-2012, when teaching the privative software
Illustrator® at the University of Vigo, we witnessed the problems encountered by
most of the pupils (Gómez-Diago
2013a
) through a pilot study underpinned by
observant participation and by the realisation of open questionnaires; we ascer-
tained how using privative software obstructs the learning process by restricting the
learning environment to the classroom and by limiting the computer literacy.
Rushkoff (
2010
: 143) points out that due to the potential of technologies and
networks to infl uence the economy, it is needed that many people participate in the
design of the interaction patterns whereby the cyberspace is articulated. Educative
institutions should empower students to create their own tools and to maintain their
safety (Gómez-Diago
2014
).
Development and accessibility of technology is helping people to create and to
cocreate in a cyberspace where there are no physical barriers. Chatzimilioudis et al.
(
2012
) highlight the role of smartphones in making collaboration easier and omni-
present, 'enabling new crowdsourcing applications by including capabilities, such
as geolocation, light, movement, or audio and visual sensors'.
We can fi nd examples of online collective creative works such as
Life in a Day
,
a crowdsourced documentary produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin
Macdonald. The documentary, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and is
free and available on the internet, comprises a selection made from 80,000 videos,
which were uploaded to the YouTube platform by thousands of users, from 192
nations. These videos show part of the lives of the authors that occurred on July 24,
2010.
In this chapter we centre on crowdfunding, but it is important to highlight the
relationship between crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. So, both concepts are
bound to the collective effort of the crowd to achieve an objective. While in crowd-
sourcing participants contribute with their talent to a collective process of creation,
in crowdfunding, the participation mainly implies funding a project for turning it
into real. The success of this fi nancial method reveals the interest of users around
the world on contributing to the development of cultural actions, ideas and even
political parties, which are being created with the help of crowdfunding actions.
Since 2012, the online crowdfunding platform Kickstarter 'raises more money for
the arts annually than the total funding provided through the US government
‐
run
National Endowment for the Arts' (Mollick and Nanda
2014
).
