The Commons
(draft) Is this word lost to time, or making a comeback?
Often when I ask groups what a Commons is there'll be a pregnant pause. Then, one person might say, doubt in their voice: "forests?" Then we're off and running.
Long ago, we used to rely on Commons to stay alive; now we hardly know what the term means.
Much more recently, we invented the New (Digital) Commons. If you've used the Web or Wikipedia, you're familiar with it. It feels rather like someone left a gift on your doorstep, because what you find there isn't paid commercial Content, it's collectively curated content, left in the open for others to use.
The
This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.