As Illich makes clear, computers have done for communication what fences did to pastures and cars did to open pathways. In each case, we witness the transformation of our commons into spaces that can be owned and therefore policed. Even without knowing how the internet was to shape the twenty first century, Illich already understood that the arrival of electronic computation was the industrialisation of communication, and with it thought itself. For all thought rests at its heart on discourse, a principle that was well understood before the twentieth century but that has gradually been buried under the illusionary conflation of knowledge with mere facts.

Pushback welcome!

Chris.