The commons is the name given to another way of owning, of relating to things in a nonproprietary mode. Throughout modernity, the commons have been the flip side of private property: not the absence of property, but a broader form of belonging, in which the interests of nonowners prevail over those of owners, the use of an asset prevails over the property title, and collective rights are deemed more important than individual ones. To borrow the words of Ursula Le Guin, a relationship between people and things in which presence is more important than progress.
