Journal of a Cosmic Anthropologist

As for global-scale players, yeah – I don’t want to hammer away at this, but “commons-based peer production” (we could wish for a shorter term) is global. It also kinda works in a local-barnraising regional way, but I suspect it works best in the framework of what some people (cue Jamais Cascio) call a “translocal community.”

Also, if you knock off work when your software project forks, the code just sits there. Whereas if you try that with an Amish barn the cows will freeze. Clearly is nice when the “commons” being constructed is abstract and sitting around in the dusty corners of a bunch of servers somewhere. Or when it can fit in your pocket.

*It is a new means of industrial production and potentially a different economic order; maybe there’s less to it than meets the eye, but it’s new, so, as a futurist, I’m necessarily interested. If I were a guy who was in earnest about “fighting market capitalism,” I don’t think I’d throw any bricks at the cops. I think I’d be devoting my efforts to removing the market price from goods and services, and the commons offers methods for that.