Practices for Sharing Knowledge

Abstract

Knowledge is a funky resource. If I share my knowledge with you, I still keep that knowledge for myself. This makes knowledge non-rivalrous . A step further, by sharing knowledge I can inspire more people. This makes knowledge anti-scarce . But while these factors make it seem like we should always share knowledge -because we can get more knowledge by doing so -knowledge is also very expensive to create. Thus we have a contradiction. We make more knowledge by sharing knowledge freely, but we don't have enough resources to create knowledge if we don't somehow get paid. This contradiction spurred the development of our patent structure today. The patent system argued that to support knowledge creators, we must box the knowledge and ask others to pay for access. But now, the patent structure is cracking. Too many large companies restrict access to innovation through litigation slowing innovation . We see the growing reaction in the Open Knowledge system. The premise of this new system is that knowledge should be shared freely. However, this system currently lacks rigorous quality control (Berberi & Roche, 2022), or a strong incentive to maintain this knowledge over the time because the knowledge creators don't get paid . Currently neither of these movements solve the problem of knowledge -how do we take advantage of knowledge's anti-scarce properties while still supporting the knowledge creators? In my research, I explore how a freelancer's cooperative (Enspiral, n.d) and a decentralized file storage network (Filecoin, n.d.) attempt to solve this problem by sharing resources among their members and reinvesting those resources into high-quality knowledge production. Effectively, they remove the need for the knowledge to make money while providing the necessary structures and regulation to verify knowledge and continue its maintenance. From this analysis, I pose a question for further research which highlights the differences between how Enspiral and Filecoin have organized their resources.