Internet infrastructure and the commons: grassroots knowledge sharing in Barcelona

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ideas of the Internet as a digital commons offer hope that innovations in networked technologies can bring about more just and equitable futures. Focused on purportedly immaterial flows of knowledge, these visions often ignore the material infrastructures on which network connectivity relies, the control exercised through those infrastructures and the knowledges needed to sustain them. Community wireless networks (CWN) offer a strategy for commoning Internet infrastructure. Exploring Guifi.net, a CWN in Barcelona, the paper explores how commoning Internet infrastructure relies on practices of knowledge sharing that complicate imaginaries of free-flowing information while not abandoning the possibilities for Internet-based commons.