Digital Commons: What Happens When the Internet Is Generous

We don’t often think of the internet as a gentle place. More often, it feels like a gladiator ring of hot takes and hustle, where your attention is auctioned off to the highest bidder. And yet—if you squint, and scroll carefully—there are these quiet corners. Unbothered. Undisturbed. Gloriously unmonetised. Wikipedia entries curated by insomniacs. Open-source software built by caffeinated idealists. Niche forums where someone, somewhere, still says, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" These are the digital commons. Not trending, not loud. But stubbornly alive.

God bless Wikipedia. It may not always be 100% accurate, but honestly? It’s 100% there for you when you need it most. At 2 a.m., when you're wondering whether frogs sleep or how a combustion engine works, it's not your professor or your textbook that shows up.

It's Wikipedia. Sometimes, generosity wears a hyperlink.

Before TikTok became the place where 15-year-olds explain quantum mechanics and ChatGPT became everyone's 3 am therapist, there was Sal Khan. In the early days of YouTube—before it was run by thumbnails and clickbait anxiety—Sal Khan sat down and did something radical: he taught. Quietly. Calmly. With nothing but a tablet, a voice, and the sort of patience that made you think maybe maths wasn’t the enemy. For those of us who glazed over in class or got lost somewhere between steps two and three, Khan Academy was a lighthouse. He didn’t confuse, he convinced. And while the world was still figuring out what to do with this new video thing, Sal was already building a commons. One chalkboard at a time.

I once sat in a seminar in Boston, sipping overpriced coffee, when a professor tossed a question at us: “Is Uber a platform or an employer?” Easy, I thought. It connects riders and drivers, like a tech-savvy matchmaker. Obviously a platform. She nodded. And then asked, "What about the rules it sets? The benefits it offers? The limits it imposes on work hours?" And suddenly, the room got very quiet. That day, Uber stopped being a platform in my mind and started becoming something more... managerial. Here's the thing: a true platform should facilitate, not dictate. A commons is what happens when people are given the tools to build, not the deadlines to meet. Uber's not your friend. GitHub might be.

Which brings me to this: platforms allow for generosity. The tip jar, the helpful review, the polite upvote. But commons? Commons depend on it. They are the living proof that people will show up, give their time, talent, and sometimes their sanity, not for profit but because someone should. The digital commons isn’t just functional—it’s aspirational.

GitHub was the first place I truly saw that happen. People building tiny tools and massive frameworks, line by line, across time zones and languages. It was like watching a global orchestra tuning their instruments and somehow managing to play the same song. Not a solo, not a show-off, but a jam session. Sure, the occasional ego strolled in with their "elegant one-liner" commits, but for the most part? It was sincere.

Collaborative. Strange and beautiful. We’re told too many cooks spoil the broth, but sometimes? Diverse cooks write the best cookbook you’ve ever seen.

And yet—when the open becomes owned, something inside people breaks. There’s grief. Not loud, not always angry. Just... quiet disappointment. Like showing up to your favourite garage where you used to tinker and suddenly being told, "Actually, we now own everything you've ever built here. Thanks for your unpaid labour." What was once a commune of shared dreams turns into a co-working space with NDAs and coffee machines that charge by the drop. People didn’t sign up for that. They wanted somewhere to imagine without being invoiced. To build without giving up their blueprints. To contribute without being controlled.

But let me be clear: not everything has to be a commons. Not everything needs to be open-source or built by a hive mind humming in unison. I like that there are lanes. Capitalism can have its sandbox. But the commons? It deserves its meadows. It's mad scientists. It's messy builders. It's lore keepers. In a world increasingly shaped by "me-first" logic, digital commons give us a rare glimpse of "we-can."

I don’t believe in pure altruism. I'm suspicious of anything that smells too clean. We are, after all, gloriously complicated beings. A bit selfish. A bit generous. But in that grey space—in the overlap between what we want for ourselves and what we hope for others—that’s where the commons live. That’s where the magic happens.

The Internet isn’t dead. It’s just hiding in plain sight. And if you look carefully, you’ll still find people tending to the digital commons like a public garden: pruning, watering, planting wild ideas. Some bloom. Some don’t. But they keep showing up. And maybe that’s enough.

Disclaimer: Uber, you still are my friend. I need you to survive. I have a 4.8 rating. I love you.

P.S. I lurk on Reddit too much. Mostly, on the threads that talk about shows. Do you think Grey's Anatomy writers really steal from Reddit plotlines?