Joshua M. Pearce is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation at the Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation. He holds appointments at Ivey Business School, the top ranked business school in Canada and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Western University in Canada, a top 1% global university. At Western he runs the Free Appropriate Sustainability Technology (FAST) research group. His research concentrates on the use of open source appropriate technology (OSAT) to find collaborative solutions to problems in sustainability and to reduce poverty. His research spans areas of engineering of solar photovoltaic technology, open hardware, and distributed recycling and additive manufacturing (DRAM) using RepRap 3-D printing. He wrote the Open-Source Lab and Create, Share, and Save Money Using Open-Source Projects.
Authored Comments
Michael - Thank you for the great article - your points about the DOD allowing contracting for FOSS I think is prescient for the eventual mandating of it -- consider the billions of dollars wasted on proprietary software at every level of government from the feds down to local school districts when their are superior FOSS solutions available now. Tax payers of every political flavor would be supportive of sound policy to reduce costs while improving performance.
This was a great article - and provided a clear carrot for parents to get involved with teaching their children to code early. It is worth mentioning the stick as well -- an enormous number of current jobs are under direct threat for automation either by scripts or robots. Most parents want their children to have some control over their lives - and STEM careers are currently the best bet for the future in a career that will not be swept away immediately in the current (and accelerating) automation frenzy.