Jaron Lanier, of VR fame, writes a wide-ranging column for Discover Magazine. Recently, he took on the topic of Open Source, with a piece entitles Long Live Closed-Source Software! and subtitled "There's a reason the iPhone doesn't come with Linux." He makes the argument that just as biological evolution requires encapsulation of DNA into distinct species, so does the evolution of software. Open source projects can create highly polished works, but they tend to evolve slowly, generating many variations but not the kind of exponential improvement that can result from a more punctuated exposure to the outside world.
If you like that one, check out his argument for why we probably are not trapped in God's Video Game and how the War on Drugs and the 55 MPH speed limit led to the current spate of unseemly anonymous behavior we see on the Internet.
