Building programmable commons

ABSTRACT Before rushing into regulating order-enabling computational technologies, is there a different way to think about them? What if power over what can be computed, translates to power over what can be decided? Can we then shape policies for the management of technologies that do not just ‘take’ power, but make it? By reviewing early work of network theorists and Internet scholars as well as literature on the governance of the commons, this paper argues that beyond market, states, and their hybrids and beyond private property and public sector regimes, there exists political space for social practices and transformative legal interventions that can give shape to radically different institutional actions for the management of the world’s infocomputational resources. Programmable commons and the public value of programmability are thus introduced as parts of a broader political project that aspires to democratise access to, and management of these resources. By drawing on the history of a family of commons – namely intellectual commons, infrastructure commons, and global commons – this paper explores the material form and impact of infocomputational technologies and presents a blend of bottom-up and top-down initiatives for their commons-based organisation.