Ward Cunningham

I've always been in awe of the many ways a computer program can influence other people's futures.

I've contributed a perspective on writing programs that acknowledges this influence and asks that programmers take more interest in the consequences of their power.

I wrote the first wiki to suport an activist group of computer professionals as we set out to create a new literature of programming. We succeeded.

Here, in About Design, I explore how the act of making can be most properly undertaken together, as a community of individuals, with the support of a federated wiki.

See also Where I Write.

Acknowledgements

Thinkers about design that have been happy to start at first principles. These include Alan Kay, Carver Mead, Christopher Alexander and George Lakoff.

The software pattern and extreme programming people who joined me on my original wiki: the Portland Pattern Repository.

The wikipedians who showed the world that a community of strangers could make something great.

The Sustainable Business and Innovation group that sponsored my reformulation of wiki.

The Sustasis Foundation that has kept the vision of patterns alive and helped me understand their contribution to design in a quantified world.