ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concepts of coproduction, social sharing and collaborative consumption, along with the rise of three-dimensional printing, are leading to forms of common pool property relevant to physical items. It focuses on physical commons, and pharmaceutical drugs as physical items, and the knowledge commons. Neil Gershenfeld, a Professor at the MIT, developed the concept of a Fab Lab, at the Center for Bits and Atoms, where a range of three-dimensional printers allow community production. The researcher Peter Troxler has suggested that an Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework could be used to investigate the potential impact of fab labs. Centralization driven by the state or market forces did not traditionally have much impact on the relatively remote Swiss village of Trbel that Netting studied. With the development of cyberspace, collaborative consumption and three-dimensional printing, a new commons-based political economy is often assumed to be the way of the future.
