Solving Problems in a Distributed (Social) Environment - The iPhone Talk::Decrypt Wiki Page

Over on the The iPhone Dev Wiki you can find the Talk:Decrypt 1.1.1 wiki page. This is the core information repository¹ for the effort to “jailbreak”² the iPhone 1.1.1 software release.

Wiki Talk pages like this are fascinating even if you can't follow the technical details. They are as much a social phenomenon as a technical one. They are both a document and a set of conversations. The conversations branch in different directions. Over time it becomes clear which branches are bearing fruit and which are not. The dead branches are pruned, the fruit-bearing branches are categorized and given structure. The result is a conversation, a history of the process, and a knowledge repository for continued research—all rolled into a single web page.

There are lots of “new” tools on the internet which turn out to simply be modern ways of doing things that have been done before; but Wiki Talk pages like this seem to have very few precedents. A group of researchers in the past might have collaborated via mail (paper or electronic) and then assembled a document; but this is something different. Not only is it an incredibly faster process, but it has an almost evolutionary growth pattern. It also has an aspect that is lacking from prior research methods—a significant lack of ego. Certainly the change histories indicate who said what, but for the most part the primary document is devoid of signatures. The text is anonymous—a true group collaboration in which the final text is that which survives on the basis of consensus and factual importance.

Finally, there's the matter of who is involved in the collaboration. This is research being done publicly, in the light of the day. For every person contributing to the page, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people watching what they do (including, no doubt, the folks at Apple :-). This is a 24-hour process, with new researchers picking up the task as previous works head off to bed. There's an excitement generated by knowing that progress will be made while you are sleeping. That others will have built on your ideas and moved them forward. That new discoveries will have been made. And there's an excitement from knowing that the eyes of the world are on you. That your words will get approved or dissed in a public form purely on the basis of their value—not on who you are. And unlike a typical research effort, in which you have a group of specialists working on the problem, a public forum like this benefits from the skills of the observers as well. Occasionally the topic may lead into areas where an observer may have a piece of expertise or an idea to contribute. And so the observer becomes a contributor, and the project moves forward that much faster.

There is no question that there are strong advantages to face-to-face development and research. But it's also clear that the public development process embodied in projects like this can be an incredibly powerful tool. I suspect that it's most useful when the task is specifically one of problem-solving. There's no clear architecture to create or direction to take. Many branches must be tried in parallel before a solution is found. And of course, a project with this type of public attention is going to draw even more researchers, both full-time and casual, to the problem.

There's a good Psychology/Anthropology thesis in here. These projects are well documented. The Wiki tracks the changes, IRC transcripts are doubtlessly available. Experiments could be tried applying these techniques to different types of problems. Someone could have a lot of fun. :-).

1. Although a primary information repository, it is probably secondary from a conversational standpoint, since I assume most of the initial discussion is taking place via IRC. Back

2. In an effort to control what applications can be installed on the iPhone (and make enabling alternative carriers more difficult) Apple has used encryption mechanisms to restrict access to the phone. Back

Technorati Tags: anthropology, developer, iphone, passwords, psychology, wiki, security, social, technology