Res Communes: The Decline and Fall of the Commons

David M. Berry

Tracing the (re)emergence of the commons as a critical concept for use in political and social action, this paper provides a genealogy of the common and introduces a parallel with the developments in contemporary society towards the privatisation and enclosure of knowledge. Taking as its cue, the notion of Late Capitalism, this paper suggests that the Information Society, although acknowledged as a possible discursive rather than empirical reality, is still able to exert a considerable sway over policy making and legislative decisions that are making concrete the ideas and arguments for a post-material society that generates wealth through the buying and selling of information, knowledge and affect. The consequences for democracy, creativity and human development are then examined through the possibility of a locked-down culture that has multinational corporations as the gatekeepers.

KEYWORDS

open source, free software, commons, creativity, politics, free culture, Libre