Radical thoughtfulness: the value of open source

It has been two years since the last iteration of the Open Source Arts Contributors Conference, a gathering for open source maintainers and contributors making computer tools for art-making. It has always been a good space for comparing notes on process and coming up with new ideas together. But in the intervening years, we have seen significant change, and I at least feel a little like the bottom of a house of hards has been pulled away. We are now asking fundamental, philosophical questions, like, why do open source? What value are we providing to the world?

These are things that literally keep me up at night! I feel a bit adrift in a way I didn't six months ago. Regardless of how one feels about AI, it has been reshaping the economics of labour. What does it mean to share something for other people to use in a world where it is easier than ever, for better or for worse, to whip up something just for yourself? When there are more machines trying to use your tool than people, how does that change where you put your time and energy? So much of work behind open source happens because the people involved think their work is valuable, so figuring this out is kinda important.

Over the course of two days and change, we commiserated, we collaborated, we shared work we were proud of, and tried to figure out a bit of a direction forward through all this, if not any definitive answers.

After the industrial revolution, people did not stop knitting, but the nature of the activity changed. It continues to be something done for joy and for community. It lets one exercise some control over a part of one's life. Perhaps open source will be the same: a thing people do to experience collaboration with others for the sake of it, to get the rewarding experience of building something together, to continue a rich history, and simply for the love of the craft. I think this is what had brought the specific people in the room with me together, too. Their love for their work and for their community was always apparent. It is foundational to the sustenance of these projects. And I don't see humans wanting less joy or community any time soon.

I take some solace in the fact that there will always be this. No one can take that away. However, it feels... like not enough. First, ejecting from the economic system and turning something into purely a hobby limits its access: not everyone has that kind of free time or that kind of energy to invest once they get time. And then, why have a community around these things specifically? We just like coding tools together... why? Tradition? Partly, sure, but it feels there's a piece of the picture not quite uncovered yet.

In Bret Victor's talk Inventing on Principle, he describes how his projects all stem from a core belief that tools are better when they put you in more direct conversation with what you make. This has resulted in a number of user interface explorations centered around direct manipulation, and new paradigms and mental models one can work with which afford more direct interaction. Are there similar core principles at play that have shaped what open source arts has been up until now? Can we use them to forge a path forward into the unknown once we have them?

Bret Victor's demos are interesting because you leave with a different perspective than you came in with. They bump you off the conceptual map into different ways of thinking than before. When a new concept clicks, it can be hard to see something the old way again.

Working with tools influences the ideas you come up with. How many songs come into being because some chords feel right to your hands, your years of practice embedded in your muscles? You can read a lot about the intellectual theory of music, but how much of the history of a genre is shaped silently by the physical shape of its central tools? An OSACC participant made the case that every artist is a technical artist, as any art is shaped by the technique that went into their training.

I think a common misunderstanding of creativity is that artists are innately blessed with ideas that show up, perfect, in their heads, and that art is about learning the skills to extract those ideas as faithfully as possible. In reality, it is probably more often a conversation between the artist and their tools, going through many iterations as one both shapes the output and also discovers new ideas along the way. Much of the time, ideas are shaped by the process of doing art. And tools affect this process in a big way.

So, another analogy: could creative coding be like a liberal arts education? Could the value of a creative tool be not just in the artifacts it enables you to create, but in the ways it permanently alters how you think? We do not read philosophy because we expect to be writing philosophy essays at a job. We do it because it changes how we think in ways that are enriching, fulfilling, and have long-term, far-reaching effects. Similarly, both creative coding and the joint ownership and maintenance of community tools shapes how you think. There is value in thinking through problems deeply and specifically, deconstructing what you see in the world into instructions. There is value in learning how other people think, and adapting a tool to serve the collective better. The act of maintenance itself has been argued to help achieve zen. The projects we work on, things like p5.js, are useful for facilitating that.

Thought transformation does not need to stop at the individual. On the contrary: there is a societal benefit to having a common shared understanding. Effective ways of thinking spread and live on; the ones that get embedded structurally in society can last generations, memes in the original sense, and a rare real case where Lamarckian evolution applies.

While there is plenty to be gained from working on something quietly, part of the goal of open source is to not be quiet. We want to impact culture. We think the communities we create spawn ideas worth spreading. We have ideas that we think are beneficial to be known from generation to generation. We have the ability to make tools to help spread those ideas more effectively. Our community tools give us agency in the culture: through them, we can introduce our own ideas and not simply receive.

As a principle, this, I think, starts to explain our purpose more and provide more of a path forward. Can you be part of the culture when you are working completely siloed on your own? I would argue not; living in a shared creative space where ideas are in conversation with each other is culture. Can you influence culture while using AI? Maybe, but by whatever means, one has to invest a lot of oneself into the work to have an impact, as tools alone will not offer a new idea or opinion. Maybe not every part of a project needs to be as saturated with new ideas, but to have value, those new ideas need to be somewhere.

Our projects, at the very least, give people the choice to take control where one feels it is beneficial.

Ultimately, nothing exists in a vacuum. Even if you sit still, society shifts around you. Art especially is in conversation with society, so art that was pointed and thought-provoking at one time may not be able to have the same impact if it were transplanted to a different time. I feel this way about AI art, certainly: an exhibit from, say, 2020 exploring LLM output as some reflection of our collective unconscious will not hit the same now, when a thundering rush of LLM output is simply the noise floor we all exist with every day; one's initial reaction to something will be different when it is a novelty than when it follows you everywhere. Similarly, there were many styles of art that had previously had weight, in part, because they signalled a level of effort and mastery of skill. Now, one may see plenty of similar outputs every day as people get excited that they, too, can get that output now, much faster. In doing so, the value at its core gets lost. The indicators of mastery move elsewhere, leaving... not nothing behind, but less something.

As 2026 races toward its end, we exist in a world where much of what we used to value is now commodified and easily reproducible. What is still scarce, and still valuable, is effort; it is the presence of deep thought. What open source creative tools offer is a platform for radical thoughtfulness. We can collectively, meticulously craft the experiences we want to exist. We can think deeply about how things work and how they affect the world. The details shape us, so we shape the details. With that, we can present ideas that are distinctly ours, and that exist for a reason.

This does not give all the answers, and certainly does not conjure funding from thin air. But it's a principle that matters, and that is starting to help at least me come up with some ethical structure I can use to navigate our uncertain future.