Remixable Software - Guest Post

DOOM was extremely humane software. It let you play with your friends, even in the shareware version. And along with the game itself, id released tools which allowed anyone to easily modify the game’s levels and assets, and then share them for others to use. This created a thriving ecosystem that exists to this day.

DOOM embraced the idea of shared creativity. Rather than requiring the user to start from a blank slate, DOOM provided the structure and tools which allowed people to re-combine and add things to an existing system. This lowered the barrier to entry, not only in terms of the required technical skill (since it was not necessary to learn to write cod... See more

Just as important as the ability to share content itself is the ability to easily share how something is made. The most common remixed media is all visual; meme templates lay out the recognizable format and it’s intuitively obvious how to change them into messages that suit your niche or community.

The personal computing revolution succeeded and we are all miserable. The dream of personal computing as augmentation for the intellect, and the joyful, radical counterculture that arose around the first PC’s has given way to our increasingly dismal present.

Shared creativity is a powerful force.