This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by S.LEE
If We Share Technology, What Kind of Future Could We Build?
(Open Innovation #2)
In my last post, I asked a simple question:
What if innovation didn’t need to be secret?
This wasn’t a rhetorical thought.
It was born from a growing discomfort—
watching every company race to build nearly identical models, each in isolation,
consuming more power, more silicon, and more human capital—just to stay ahead by a few months.
That race might be “natural” in today’s economy,
but I’m starting to think it’s not sustainable,
not efficient,
and not inevitable.
A Vision of a Different Future
So I asked myself:
If we shared technology—openly, responsibly, and with proper reward mechanisms—
what might change?
Companies could stop duplicating the same infrastructure,
and instead co-develop stronger systems with less energy waste.AI models could be trained with pooled data,
improving accuracy while reducing bias and silos.Contributors—whether individuals or small teams—could receive micropayments
or royalties every time their idea is used, even inside a Fortune 500 company.Innovation would accelerate.
Instead of 100 companies reinventing the same thing,
we’d have 100 companies solving 100 different problems.And maybe, just maybe,
our AI future wouldn’t belong to a few billion-dollar players—
but to all of us.
The Root Problem: Misaligned Incentives
Right now, the world rewards ownership, not contribution.
We hoard knowledge to extract value from it.
But in doing so, we slow everything down—
and create inequality, fragility, and ecological damage.
The explosion of data centers isn’t just a byproduct.
It’s a symptom of an incentive system that says:
“Unless you own the whole thing, you get nothing.”
That needs to change.
The Danger of Keeping Innovation Closed
Closed systems always reach a limit.
They concentrate power, discourage collaboration,
and eventually get outpaced by the open ones.
If we don’t shift now, we risk a world where:
- AI is controlled by a handful of corporations
- Data extraction outpaces regulation
- Climate impacts from compute demand spiral out of control
- Smaller innovators are priced out, no matter how brilliant their ideas
We can’t afford to build the future this way.
A Thought Worth Building Together
This is why I’m writing these posts.
Not because I have all the answers—
but because the right answers can only emerge from shared thinking.
The vision I’m exploring—a system where technology is shared, tracked, and rewarded—
will require ideas from across disciplines:
- Engineers to design attribution systems
- Economists to model value flow
- Lawyers to define new licensing norms
- Policymakers to incentivize public-good development
- And individuals, like you, to ask better questions
What I Hope to Do With This Series
I want to offer not just a model,
but a mirror.
To reflect how we currently operate,
and ask:
“Is this the best we can do?”
“What would a better system look like?”
I’ll continue to write about concrete mechanisms—like technology-as-stock, contribution tracking, and game-based simulation models.
But this post is about why those ideas matter in the first place.
Because I believe technology should serve more than profit.
It should serve people.
And the planet we all depend on.
Let’s reimagine what innovation could be.
Together.
— Seungho
This post was written with help from ChatGPT, acting as a conversation partner and structural assistant.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by S.LEE