Sharing through technology
At the turn of the millennium, the term web 2.0 emerged, which was (and still is) used as a buzzword, sometimes commented that the difference between web 1.0 and 2.0 is that buttons and pictures on the sites are rounded frames. But the fundamental difference lies in the transfer of responsibility and the activity associated with content creation. While Web 1.0 copied traditional media in that creation was primarily a matter for professionals, and the user was mainly a consumer of content, the change emerging with the beginning of the new millennium makes potentially everyone a creator.
The principles of sharing and collective cooperation are set well. It is possible to achieve significantly better results than in the case of professionally created work. An example is the English version of Wikipedia, which is comparable in quality (i.e. error) to Britannica, the well-known work, which is backed by top authors and a professional editorial team. However, Wikipedia is much larger, more up-to-date, and better supplemented with resources.
We could find more similar examples, but they only show that a well-designed sharing model can be a meaningful idea, whether it is content creation or business. In the last five years, the word sharing has become a fundamental topic, which a large part of the so-called digital economy is trying to reflect in services such as Uber for transport, Rekola with bicycles, or Airbnb with accommodation.
After all, social networks are also based on the idea of sharing - the user uploads content to them that he believes could be of interest to others, and they can interact with them in some way. Even though the media bubble around social networks is collapsing, it is still an essential medium for news, communication, or political marketing.
However, sharing and emphasizing human content creation is not always maintained in the long run. An example is blogs, which have been thought to replace news to some extent and now play various roles, but it is undoubtedly impossible to perceive them as a real competitor to media houses. Similarly, hyperlocal reporting or people's participation in reporting is relatively marginal and poorly functioning in the long run.
However, technologies have opened up a vast space for sharing content or information of various kinds, and the dimension of sharing is one of the essential elements of its functioning. In this respect, it would even be possible to speak of a culture of sharing as a kind of thought model that regulates sharing (such as illegal content). In some way, it creates space for cultivated and evolving discussion and motivates individual participants to share.
The sharing economy (or collaborative economy or peer-to-peer economy) represents an exciting and specific area of sharing, which is associated with economic potential. The primary macroeconomic premise in this economic model is that it may not always be most advantageous to own a property, but it can be rented or shared with others. This can take the form of exchange, but more common is the regular rental for money. At the same time, digital technologies have made this form of economy something that is easily accessible to the general public and at the same time has a rapidly growing economic potential.
Digital competence must therefore be applied to at least three points in this area - the use of services, their critical evaluation, and possible active involvement in sharing about economic or social profit.
In the previous section, we indicated some well-known services of the sharing economy and at the same time showed that this is an area that has a primary relationship to services - from transport to accommodation. It is not possible to say that a single model would gradually replace all services, but each of them is trying to find its way of working. They have in common that there is usually a specific service provider who, for the supply of technical (or other) infrastructure, receives a share of the turnover realized through the service. At the same time, it is tough to find a clear definition of which service is still part of the sharing economy and which is no longer.
As for the critical evaluation of such services, this is probably best seen in the discussions around Uber. On the one hand, some users have the technology for an affordable service in which a taxi driver cannot easily deceive them. On the other hand, professional taxi operators point out that the service circumvents the regulation of professions and thus reduces costs, which is essentially unfair competition. There may be an even broader debate about Airbnb, where homeowners typically avoid paying taxes and cause housing prices to rise rapidly in large city centers, resulting in depopulation.
Undoubtedly, the economy of sharing cannot be described as pure evil or good. Individual services may differ in their social impact (for example, the tutoring service may be less problematic than Airbnb) and in the setting of rules. However, it can be said unequivocally that this is an area of business where sharing is a basic premise of service design and which, as a whole, will continue to grow.
Another form of user interaction based on sharing, complemented by openness and without cost to access, is Wikipedia. It is built on open-source MediaWiki technology, but its main wealth is the community of users who create and edit entries. The encyclopedia has a robust and sophisticated way of resolving disputes and other various problematic points, which can sometimes lead to divisions within the editorial team. This happens despite the specific, clearly tangible criteria of functioning that all actors can count on.
Wikipedia is an exciting project in many dimensions. The first is the sharing itself. Many users are willing to share their know-how, write, edit and add articles so that they correspond to the comprehensive template. And to a large extent, without the right to knowledge - the whole encyclopedia is an anonymous collective work for readers, where the community's consensus is what ensures the considerable quality of the entire project. Sharing is therefore connected with finding common ground and reaching an agreement. Sometimes it is even possible to talk about the so-called democratic model of truth, where we consider the fact to be what the majority decides on.
The second interesting point is social inclusivity. There are projects such as Seniors Write Wikipedia or Students Write Wikipedia, where people who are not among those who would typically perceive the foremost experts are also systematically involved in creating the encyclopedia. Jan Sokol notes that while in the past intergenerational learning between a grandparent and a grandchild took place directly, today it is to some extent associated with the fact that the geographical distance is too great. In such a case, the senior is invited to participate indirectly in the learning, for example, by co-creating an encyclopedia. Wikipedia can be made up of anyone who so desires and is willing to follow the rules. Unless the encyclopedia is blocked in the country.
Today's most significant barrier is language. The English Wikipedia is significantly better and more extensive than those from, for example, less spoken language groups.
Being one of the most visited sites in Wikipedia is a starting point for thinking or learning, which means that the concept of articles or the choice of resources may be of some political interest. For example, the cited literature will most likely be the one the reader reaches for first. The author of the quotes can increase their reflection of specific phenomena or at least work with the familiarity of their texts.
The topic of open access is relatively broad and includes legal, economic, ethical, and social or technical issues. At this point, we are primarily interested in the relationship between openness and the possibility of cooperation.
When it comes to open data, it must be said that their primary purpose is primarily sharing and collaboration. Mendel was not the only one to have data from the pea experiments, but he certainly had the most, and his data was relatively readily available at the same time. This allowed his followers - over a long period - to begin to think about heredity in the modern sense. If he had his data created in such a way that it was either closed or completely incomprehensible, we probably would know almost nothing about it.
Thus, the openness of data is in principle related to the fact that it must be well and clearly described so that someone else can know it. This is a requirement that all programmers know well in terms of code - they should say how the algorithm works, and what each function and procedure does. In fact, it should be very similar to data - that is, open. It must be well described, both in terms of content and methodology. At the same time, they must be stored in a format that is easy for other users to read and, ideally, also machine-readable.
Therefore open data is an invitation to participate - from the possibility of continuing the results of scientific work through data for modeling or machine learning to, for example, the case of control. Science should be based on the principle of transparent records, which ensures the openness of data.
Another category of open access data is scientific articles, which we have already mentioned. Openness is essential for scientific articles, as it allows for collaboration and scientific communication. If the texts are inaccessible, there is a significant reduction in the communication environment, which negatively impacts science. At present, it is possible to identify two approaches that reflect this aspect to some extent. For some scientific disciplines, such as particle physics, there are preprint repositories (Arxiv.org ), where versions of articles are available, from the first versions submitted for review to versions that come from journals. Authors can react to each other almost immediately (both in the form of a separate publication and by sending an e-mail) and so leading to the expansion and deepening of scientific communication.
P2P review systems are a specific service that are gaining more and more support. It is possible to upload an article to them and wait for the community's reaction, which will carry out its first review (and, of course, also participate in the study). A person receives feedback before sending the text to the magazine—making the chances of success and the resulting text's quality increase significantly.
Another form of collaborative scientific cooperation is scientific social networks. Typically, scientists upload their articles and allow others to download, read, and comment on them. The aim is to develop scientific communication and build communities of people who deal with similar topics. Academia.edu or Researchgate aims to promote scientific communication and collaboration that is at least partially open.
A specific form is open educational resources (OER), which is a diverse conglomeration of online content that is used for educational purposes - this includes, for example, MOOCs and, teacher presentations. In general, the aim is to keep educational resources as open as possible, promote education throughout the population, and avoid unnecessary personal development obstacles. However, it is also possible to say that the current (and European planned) legislation is ambiguous and problematic.
