Information Commons

Many of the resources that Americans own as a people — forests and minerals under public lands, public information and federally financed research, the broadcast airwaves and public institutions and traditions — are increasingly being taken over by private business interests. These appropriations of common assets are siphoning revenues from the public treasury, shifting ownership and control from public to private interests, and eroding democratic processes and shared cultural values.

In the face of this marketization of public resources, most Americans… more

In the fall of 1964 a twenty-one-year-old Berkeley undergraduate named Mario Savio climbed the steps of Sproul Hall and denounced his university for bending over backwards to "serve the need of American industry." Savio, the leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, accused the university of functioning as "a factory that turns out a certain product needed by industry" rather than serving as the conscience and a critic of society. To the modern ear this sixties rhetoric may sound outdated.… more

In his State of the Union address tonight, President Clinton plans to ask Congress for as much as $50 million to provide computers and Internet access to poor households. Earlier this month Bill Bradley bemoaned the comparatively low rates of Internet access among such groups; Al Gore frequently boasts … more