The Internet was founded as a utopia. Influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s and techno-libertarianism, it was certain that a new form of society would be founded—free, democratic, decentralized. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, shared his code and made it freely accessible so that people could work together on this vision—open source—a concept of cohesion, solidarity, and transparency.
But today, many of these visions have failed. Technology has changed with the world, and the dark sides are emerging. This is why the design-theoretical work Open directory is concerned with re-evaluating the original visions of the Internet in order to find out which concepts are still relevant today and where new perspectives need to be sought. Can the open source concept and the values associated with it serve as a model for a more responsible use of technology?
A computer's directory is the file system cataloguing structure that contains references to other computer files and other directories. In the form of her master's thesis, Clara Grass opens up her very own directory. She not only publishes her metaphorical code for the project, but also opens up her entire directory. She publishes her theoretical work, but also everything that has contributed to it—texts, tools, and technology. The book and website follow the open source idea: knowledge as a commons.