Chapter 19. Everything Is Known

Eugene Kim

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez's epic novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Aureliano Buendia spends his days and nights in an old alchemical laboratory, isolated from the rest of the world, his nose buried in books. While Aureliano mostly keeps to himself and says little, he occasionally surprises members of his family or his small group of friends with a fact or insight they would have expected from someone more worldly. When they ask him how he could possibly have known about something, he responds simply, "Everything is known."

It's a fascinating thesis, one that not only highlights our individual ignorance, but also suggests a different approach to pursuing knowledge. When we are faced with something that is new to us, we often forge ahead blindly, learning and creating as we go along. We usually call this process "innovation." Our use of this word suggests that we place high value on uniqueness, on things we think have not happened before. However, how often are we qualified to determine whether something is new? How much do most of us know about our past or about the past of others? More importantly, if something is profound and relevant and significant, who cares if it's new? It's far more interesting if it's been discovered repeatedly in many different contexts. We should take note of important new ideas, but we should cherish ideas that prove their importance over and over again.

Many people find the emergent, collaborative aspects of free and open source software fascinating and compelling. However, before we start labeling anything as "innovative," we ought to seek what is already known by examining emergent collaboration in other contexts and by identifying recurring patterns there. If we can find patterns that occur over and over again in all these contexts, we can apply this knowledge to other areas. Simply put, these patterns can improve our ability to work together regardless of the domain, a skill on which the future of our world depends.

This chapter examines two stories: the PACT compiler project in the mid-1950sthe first collaborative software effort to transcend organizational boundariesand the recovery effort at the site of the World Trade Center following the tragedy on September 11, 2001. On the surface, these stories seem very different, but closer examination reveals several common patterns, patterns that are also found in successful free and open source software projects. These patterns suggest principles for facilitating emergent collaboration in many different contexts, from software development to grass-roots politics.