"Two cheers for the market, but not three!"

The Commons is today a shared space on the Internet, that was first placed there in a then state-of-the-art version in the late eighties (a basic Listserv) with the intention of providing a wide open, world-wide, non-government forum which could serve as a working tool and assembly area for people and groups concerned with improving our understanding and control of technology as it impacts on people in their daily lives. The three central themes of all our exchanges and work here: the much needed move to sustainability, social justice, and the critical role of individual responsibility in the making of both.

One of the distinguishing features of our work under The Commons is that in all our projects and programs we have decided to concentrate our energies wholly on identifying short term measures (which we define as anything that can be achieved within a two-to-four year or less time span) -- and specifically (a) actions and measures which give promise of being able to achieve openly targeted and verifiable impacts within this narrow time window and (b) in the process also hopefully alter perceptions of how yet further progress on the sustainability agenda can be achieved. Moreover, we believe that these short term actions should in all cases be accompanied by public announcements about the specific near term improvement targets and that these results should be open and publicly verifiable.

Virtually all of the work of The Commons has thus far been carried out 'off the economy', with the support of the founders and a growing band of volunteers and users. We saw the whole venture then, and continue to see it now, as a modest step in the direction of creating new forms of citizen information, debate, consensus, action and, eventually, governance. The Commons is of course not alone in this ambitious struggle to find and put to work new forms of democracy and citizen action which make sense in this age of educated citizenry and an ever more knowledgeable society.

That said, please note that The Commons is not an "anti-market forum". To the contrary we retain the words of wisdom of Arthur Okun when he wrote some years ago: "Two cheers for the market, but not three!" You will see that theme time and again in these pages and programs. The market and its handmaiden technology are terrific, even indispensable tools for achieving our ambitious objectives for 21st century society. It's just that neither is not equipped to set these objectives. Which is where community, governance and citizen participation and action come in.

For a fairly concise early statement of objectives and plans on the Web we refer you to the 1994 statement, Why the Commons?. For an update, you may also find it of some interest to have a look through the materials presented here under the Quick Tour section here. The best introduction to The Common -- what it is, how it works, and what we hope to make of it -- there is nothing like going over to that menu bar just to your left and working your way down it. It won't take long, should be pretty interesting if you share our main concerns, and will help make you into a better neighbor and more efficient user of all these tools and materials, just in case you decide to go further.

>>> Which we now invite you to do, starting with the Road Map.

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