“Historically, the center of the Universe had been believed to be a number of locations. Many mythological cosmologies included an axis mundi, the central axis of a flat Earth that connects the Earth, heavens, and other realms together. In the 4th century BC Greece, the geocentric model was developed based on astronomical observation, proposing that the center of the Universe lies at the center of a spherical, stationary Earth, around which the sun, moon, planets, and stars rotate. With the development of the heliocentric model by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century, the sun was believed to be the center of the Universe, with the planets (including Earth) and stars orbiting it.
In the early 20th century, the discovery of other galaxies and the development of the Big Bang theory led to the development of cosmological models of a homogeneous, isotropic Universe (which lacks a central point) that is expanding at all points.”
Wikipedia.
Perhaps I fall into a line of thinking as outdated as the axis mundi, but I passionately believe that the OSS is the centre of the universe around which all other digital technologies revolve. Even the sexy new “saviour” technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), network virtualisation, etc can only reach their promised potential if there are operational tools sitting in the background managing them and their life-cycle of processes efficiently. And the other “hero” technologies such as analytics, machine learning, APIs, etc aren’t able to do much without the data collected by operational tools.
No matter how far and wide I range in the consulting world of communications technologies and the multitude of industries they impact, I still see them coming back to what OSS can do to improve what they do.
Many people say that OSS is no longer relevant. Has the ICT world moved on to the geometric model, heliocentric or even big bang model? If so, what is at their centre?
Am I just blinded by what Sir Ken Robinson describes as, “When people are in their Element, they connect with something fundamental to their sense of identity, purpose, and well-being. Being there provides a sense of self-revelation, of defining who they really are and what they’re really meant to be doing with their lives.” Am I struggling to see the world from a perspective other than my own?