Can Open Source Hardware help fill the gap and bring technology within reach for everybody?
I am a biologist in academia. I am curious about how Open Source Hardware can improve the way we do research and the way in which we distribute our results and the technology that we produce.
Definitions first
The Open Source Hardware Association defines Open Source Hardware as:
“hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design”
Starting from the late 90s many engineers, passionate users, companies and organization have tried to define standards for Open Source Hardware and to advertise for it, they were probably inspired by the success of Open Source Software.
Lessons from Software
A couple of decades ago, the Open Source movement made a strong statement on how the source code of commonly used software should be available to everybody.
This was a matter of fairness. We deal with software constantly in our life and it sounds reasonable that we know how that software works.
But this proved also practical. It fueled software development in the last decades and the broad start-up environment that thrived around it.
It is worth mentioning that sharing the source code is good enough, but many open source projects went further than that. They provided extensive and sometimes redundant documentation on how to use their product, on how to take control of it and on how to modify any aspect of it. Then, the community could redistribute the modified and improved products thanks to permissive and copyleft licenses.
The success of this model highlights the benefits that arise from a widespread and distributed access to knowledge for everybody.
In Universities and in biology
Through synthetic biology, open source hardware is already making its way to biology and biotechnology.
I am trying to collect a list of projects that are related to Open Source Hardware and Biology and looking at homemade centrifuges, open PCR machines, microfluidics devices, I have the impression that this way of doing things is rapidly growing.
As stated above, I am interested in its role and impact on academic research, specifically in the fields of biology and plant science. (and eventually I would like to use those tools myself for my research :) )
Redistributing knowledge
By definition Open Source software and hardware are about how we distribute knowledge.
A model that stresses the importance of openly redistributing knowledge as widely as possible and of facilitating re-use of that knowledge / technology seems only reasonable for Universities, which indeed have the role in society of generating knowledge and making it available.
What I am also really curious about is to figure out if Open Source Hardware could also improve the way we do research and not exclusively the way we distribute it.
Making research easier for academics
In my (small) experience as academic researcher, one of the main issues that we, young biologists, face is that we are mostly end users of very expensive and sophisticated machines and technologies.
In this way, we can perform very complex tasks and experiments with relatively little effort, but we also partially lose control on what we are doing.
In details, this might cause that:
- Laboratories depend more and more on high level funding; low funded labs get left behind, which could be an issue on the global scale. Since the end user model is productive in the short term, laboratories that try different approaches, again, might get left behind,
- This relegates researchers to a performer / technical position, in which they are required to perform a high number of repetitive tasks with little chances to modify the workflows of their experiments. If researchers would gain more control on the technology that they use, they might have bigger chances of optimizing their experimental workflows. For example, making them simpler, less polluting and more accessible.
- This might have an effect also on reproducibility and distributed collaborative development, simply because the chances of making reproducible something on which you have no control are small.
Open Source Hardware might have a role solving those issues but since only few laboratories implement open hardware methodically I can’t be sure about it.
But open source software already helped biologist a lot, especially in bioinformatics and in data analysis through impressive frameworks such as, for example, BioConductor. This raises hopes that Open Source Hardware could have a similar impact for wet lab scientists.
Of course the issue of a funding system that might encourage bad scientific behavior remains, but Open Hardware could be a move in the right direction and improve the life of young biologists.
An Impact on farming?
As academic researcher I often wonder what will be the impact of my research.
I am specialized in genetics and plant biology, so my research might have impact on agriculture and farming, especially in breeding new crop varieties.
If we, plant biologists, would apply Open Source Hardware systematically, we might, for example, improve farming by lowering the costs necessary to access technologies such as plant breeding.
So, can Academic Research improve its impact, down the line, on farming by adopting an open knowledge / open source software and hardware model? And also, could it help shift the role of a farmer from end user to user/developer?
Some organizations are already investing on this model. I am moving a little bit outside of my field of expertise right here, so I might not be the best person to answer those questions; but as always, the success of Open Source Software raises hope that yes, this can happen.
Thanks to Silvia, Leone and Alessandro for the help and the ideas.
