Civic Renewal and the Commons of Cyberspace

This article brings together two current discussions. One—which is already familiar to readers of the National Civic Review—concerns the somewhat shaky condition of American civil society. The other investigates the Internet as a particular kind of public resource, a “commons.” By bringing these discussions together, I hope to stimulate thinking about how the Internet might help to revitalize civil society. I also want to draw attention to developments that are threatening to spoil the Internet’s civic potential. People who are concerned about America’s civil society believe that our habits and skills of association have weakened over time. Robert Putnam and others argue that joining associations and participating in loose cooperative networks (especially those that unite diverse people) makes the economy more efficient, introduces citizens to politics, increases the level of knowledge about public issues, helps to solve social problems without high financial cost or government coercion, and even promotes psychological and physical health.1 Some people doubt Putnam’s narrative portraying a decline in the health of civil society, arguing that he has romanticized the civil society of the 1950s and overlooked some contemporary strengths.2 In my own view, the biggest problem is the deterioration of certain institutions that once helped ordinary people wield power while generating broad discussion of public issues, especially unions, political parties, civil rights organizations, and metropolitan daily newspapers.3 I am not convinced that we have found substitutes for these institutions. But even if our civil society is reasonably strong compared to past decades, this is no reason for complacency. In each generation, it takes conscious effort to sustain old networks and associations and to bring new ones to life. The second discussion, regarding the Internet as a commons, may be less familiar to readers of this journal. Some legal scholars and public-interest advocates (and computer hackers) view the Internet as a resource that is neither divided among separate property holders nor managed directly by the state. In a commons, volunteers donate labor to sustain a shared property, deliberate about its governance, and allow the whole community to reap its benefits.