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Are.na
Gemma Copeland
Digital Commons
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Basically, free software combines capitalist, socialist and anarchist ideas. The capitalist part is: free software is something businesses can use and develop and sell. The socialist part is: we develop this knowledge, which becomes available to everyone and improves life for everyone. And the anarchist part: you can do what you like with it.

The British Digital Cooperative
The British Digital Cooperative
How to Create a Thriving Global Commons Economy
How to Create a Thriving Global Commons…

I discuss firstly Ursula Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986), in which she urges that the first piece of technology was not a weapon but a bag for carrying seeds, asserting that the function of technology is not resolution but continuing process. Donna Haraway’s concept of “string figures” builds further on Le Guin by proposing how distributed forms of access to and dissemination of knowledge can give rise to collective agency, while Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology contributes to envisioning the commons as something that necessarily involves a constant transformation of knowledge – regarding both the objects of enquiry and the apparatus (resources, discourses) through which they are viewed. This is relevant for addressing how the commons can produce situated knowledges (Haraway) and understanding how its collective nature only seemingly suggests that it conflicts with the partial positionings of individuals within a collective.

Thick Webs & Continuous Relays: Feminist Epistemologies for the Digital Commons
Thick Webs & Continuous Relays: Fem…
OPEN SCORES. How to program the Commons
OPEN SCORES. How to program the Commons
DECODE
DECODE
Welcome to The Commons Conservancy | The Commons Conservancy
Welcome to The Commons Conservancy | Th…
Silence is a Commons by Ivan Illich
Silence is a Commons by Ivan Illich

To me, however, it is important to emphasize not only that enclosures happen all the time, but also that there is constant commoning. People again and again try to create and access the resources in a way that is different from the modalities of the market, which is the standard way for capital to access resources. Take for example the peer-to-peer production happening in cyberspace, or the activities in social centers, or simply the institutions people in struggle give themselves to sustain their struggle.

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