“Content Is Infrastructure,” the 14th installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on October 3rd, 2007, by David Wiley who currently serves as an Associate Professor of Instructional Technology and also the Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning 1, (C()SL), at Utah State University. Thanks David for a great posting!
In his posting David starts by suggesting that “Content is Infrastructure,” and then makes three related statements (relative to the development of education):
- I wish to point out that content is absolutely critical.
- I want to suggest that we must understand that content is infrastructure before we can see radical improvements in education.
- We have to understand that content is infrastructure to see current “open educational resources” projects and initiatives from the proper perspective.
David used physical infrastructure in the form of public roads as an analogy for content as digital education infrastructure. He suggested that as roads allow for development and innovation, content (without toll fees) allows similarly for innovation to take place in education. Unlike roads though, content infrastructure is much more effectively developed through massively parallel, trial, and error processes than through a formally architected approach.
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