Broken World Thinking in the Digital Era

Abstract

This paper explores the shift from the collaborative early open-source software movement to current platform capitalism. This shift is a form of digital enclosure that privatizes collective human knowledge. This paper uses three distinct analytical views to understand this crisis. First, a Marxist framework shows the motive behind the structural extraction of immaterial labor. Second, an institutional perspective shows the method of corporate capture used to co-opt open-source movements. Finally, the political economy of maintenance exposes the physical consequences of this economic model. Tech monopolies extract value from the digital commons. However, they systematically underfund the important maintenance labor required to keep it secure. This creates a severe global sustainability crisis. Society must abandon its obsession with continuous innovation and adopt “broken world thinking.” Foundational software must be recognized as a critical public good supported by strong state and corporate funding.