Underneath the Knowledge Commons

A struggle is ensuing to produce and protect what is being called the Knowledge Commons in defiance of the latter day regime of enclosures around knowledge and informational goods. As with the pre-capitalist common lands on which the majority of people subsisted, the idea is that we can build a resource, a life source, of intellectual wealth to sustain people within informatic capitalism. But this endeavour is not without political, tactical and philosophical problems. In this first issue of the new format Mute, we foreground the antagonisms which the Knowledge Commons throw up. Texts by: Gregor Claude, Yves Degoyon, Martin Hardie, Benjamin Mako Hill, Jaromil, Yuwei Lin, Peter Linebaugh, Aymeric Mansoux, Agnese Trocchi, RampArt Hacklab, Palle Torsson, James Wallbank, Steve Wright, Simon Yuill and Soenke Zehle