ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the commons laden purpose is sourced through peer to peer relationships in a community; builds on the culture through open source connectivity; resulting in a wealth of communal and institutional networks, culminating in an information society. In both the pre- and post-industrial networked information economies, furthermore, the physical capital required for production is broadly distributed throughout society. In North America, this occurs interpersonally via personal computers and virtual networks. America cannot fully advance in the networked informational sense, economically and socially, unless Zimbabwe does, as it were. In an alter-modern world of community activation, modern needs traditional and vice versa. Communication, in fact, is the basic unit, for Benkler, of social existence. Culture and knowledge, broadly conceived, form the basic frame of reference through which people come to understand themselves and others in the 'alter-modern' world, that combines pre- and post-industrial modalities.
