The Commons

Context:

How might the RIBA identify and bring together the maximum amount of knowledge, at the lowest cost, and within the shortest period of time so as to solve complex problems?

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‘The field of knowledge is the common property of all mankind’ - letter from US President Thomas Jefferson (1807)

In any community there are resources which are freely available and shared by everyone and other resources which are controlled and protected as private commodities.  The term ‘free’ is used here to denote open access but not necessarily zero cost – in the words of Richard Stallman: ‘free, not in the sense of free beer, but free in the sense of free speech’ – and in this context, the commons includes any free source of wealth that is shared on an equal basis.  The commons has been defined by Lawrence Lessig [5] as ‘a resource to which anyone within the relevant community has a right without obtaining the permission of anyone else.  In some cases, permission is needed but is granted in a neutral way.’  Examples of the commons are natural resources, such as: air, wildlife, and deserts; shared assets, such as: the Internet, public parks, streets, and public buildings; and our cultural heritage, such as: language, musical notation, scientific theories, and mathematical equations.

The notion that anything which is valuable must be safeguarded through property rights and controls is so entrenched that the opposite idea - that some assets are more valuable when they are free to be taken - strikes us as being foolish and idealistic.  Yet in the context of knowledge management, the principles of the commons don’t merely make sense: in most cases they represent the only way to realise the full economic value of information and to ensure that it is not under-utilised – ‘information wants to be free.’  An information commons allows people to innovate and create new knowledge by building upon other people’s work; it avoids unproductive duplication of research effort and unnecessary reinvention of ideas; for example, scientific researchers often make free use of their rivals discoveries to develop new theories – Newton once wrote: ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’  Of course there will always be certain critical information assets which people cannot share freely with their rivals, but ‘enclosing’ an information commons through copyrights and other restrictions ought to be the exception rather than the general rule.  In situations where the issues are complex and collaboration is the only realistic route to success, building a shared knowledge environment and employing suitable policies, contracts and technologies for its operation can be a highly effective approach.

Historically, private individuals who wished to share information publicly without the dead weight of proprietary copyright restrictions had only one option: to place their work in the ‘public domain’, meaning that it would be available for other people to use for any purpose, including commercial exploitation.  The recent emergence of a commons infrastructure for sharing digitised information has created an intermediate zone between these alternatives.  This system is still at an early stage of development, but a combination of policies for open content, legal contracts (such as the Creative Commons Licence which applies to this report) and new web technologies are now available, making it possible to access and integrate knowledge at a far lower cost and in a much faster way than traditional approaches whilst retaining an appropriate level of control. 

Therefore:

Establish the wiki as a collaborative commons for academics and practitioners to share knowledge and ideas – create policies and legal contracts which encourage sharing and the reuse of information, and provide technology that makes knowledge easy to access and share.

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The emergence of a commons infrastructure for sharing knowledge has been possible due to recent developments in information and communications technology, particularly the permanent reductions in the cost of sharing digitised information, which are now effectively zero.  However, the motive for sharing information is a social phenomenon, and conversely, the barriers to sharing information are usually cultural rather than technical issues.  The pattern Peer Production is frequently linked to The Commons; it explains why a collaborative approach does not necessarily require financial incentives.  The pattern Governance describes the mechanism for regulating a collaborative commons infrastructure.