# a blog about things that I've been thinking hard about

# What If Anyone Could ...

19 May, 2007
There are things that only a select few can do. And there are things that almost anyone can do. But as time passes, and technology develops (and develops at an accelerating rate), some things move from the "select few can do it" to the "anyone can do it" category.
by Philip Dorrell

- What if anyone could start their own newspaper?
- What if anyone could start their own radio station?
- What if anyone could have their own television show?
- What if anyone could see the source code of the software they used? What if anyone could change the software, and give those changes to anyone else?
- What if anyone could design and implement their own programming language?
- What if anyone could start their own company?
- What if anyone could talk to anyone else in the world (for free)?
- What if anyone could send a written message to anyone else in the world (for free)?
- What if anyone could have their own factory?
- What if anyone could design their own computer chip?
- What if anyone could design and implement their own Internet application with its own communication protocol?
- What if anyone could start their own Digg/Reddit-style voter-driven links site?
- What if anyone could fly freely anywhere they wanted to?
- What if anyone could edit this web page? What if anyone could edit this website? What if anyone could edit an article in an encyclopedia?

## Notes

### To start your own newspaper ...

Start a website. Publish news on it. Call it a "newspaper".

### To start your own radio station ...

You need to rent a server that can do streaming audio. Or, you could just make podcasts, and post them on a server.

### To have your own television show ...

The hardest part is creating content that people would want to watch. Once you've made each program as a video, compress it down to a suitable size, and post it to YouTube. It it's good enough, then you will get the viewers.

### To see the source code, and change the source code, and give those changes to other people ...

See www.fsf.org.

### To design and implement your own programming language ...

With parsing packages like pyparsing and Antlr it is much easier than it used to be to design a grammar and implement a compiler for a new language.

### To start your own company ...

In some countries it's easy, in others it's very hard. (See here for some detailed figures on "ease of doing business".)

### To talk to anyone else (for free) ...

Skype

### To send a written message to anyone else (for free) ...

We've been doing that one for quite a while, and what with all the spam we get, it has been seriously suggested that people shouldn't be able to send messages for free.

### To have your own factory ...

CNC and make-it-yourself 3D printers

### To make your own computer chip ...

Details in this K5 article

### To design and implement your own Internet application with its own communication protocol ...

The ability do do this is designed right into the Internet – you don't need to ask anyone's permission to create an application that uses the raw packet-sending capability of the Internet to communicate between arbitrary Internet-connected computers anywhere in the world. (Technically, this is possible because the Internet is designed as a dumb network.)

### To start your own Digg/Reddit-style voter-driven links site ...

The problem with starting a voter-driven links site is that you need a critical mass of users to make it work. When we consider sites like Digg and Reddit, each site has its own collection of users, and its own system of counting votes and ranking stories. To implement a system that lets anyone start a voter-driven popular stories site, we need to separate the collection of voters from the ranking system. In other words, have a voting site within which voters could vote for stories, and then give access to the raw voting data to anyone who wanted to use that data to calculate rankings for new and popular stories.

### To fly freely anywhere you want to ...

Currently there isn't any safe, cheap technology that lets you fly anywhere you want to (I can think of helicopters, which are expensive, and microlights, which are dangerous), but at the same time there is no law of physics preventing the eventual development of such a technology. If such a technology did exist, then it would be much easier for people in general to go to remote places that currently they cannot easily visit, and the freedom of exploration that many of us enjoy on the roads would extend to the whole countryside.

### Web pages, websites and an encyclopedia that anyone can edit ...

For the first two, the wiki, for the last one, Wikipedia.

Vote for or comment on this article on Reddit or Hacker News ...