The document introduces the concept of "The Five Commons" as a new economic paradigm for the 21st century. It argues that current economic models focus too much on linear processes and static roles, whereas the Five Commons model encourages distributed, non-linear activities like making, using, and sharing physical and digital resources. The Five Commons framework identifies Food, Energy, Things, Culture, and Access as five areas that, through collaborative participation, can meet human needs in a sustainable way.

1. The Five Commons
An invitation to 21st Century wealth-generating ecologies
Forward Foundation / Future Forward Institute

2. The Five Commons
The 20th century industrial economic paradigm centers on the control of
linear processes and people.
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3. The Five Commons
The 20th century industrial economic paradigm operates by dismissing both
resources and waste as outside of the primary concerns of economics.
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4. The Five Commons
A not-quite 21st century economic paradigm introduces a shift towards
decentralized participatory networks of people who make, share, and use
physical and virtual artifacts. However, this paradigm still focuses on well-
defined and often static roles of participants.
This paradigm imagines that singular skills translate to the network society.
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5. The Five Commons
A 21st century economic paradigm adds a further innovation: a shift in focus
towards distributed activity. Now participants can move from activity to
activity, taking advantage of a diversity of different ways of seeing and solving
problems. However, people still tend to arrange these activities in a linear
pattern.
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6. The Five Commons
The combination of non-linearity and activity-orientation leads to the
making/using/sharing cycle. The making/using/sharing cycle creates
regenerative flow because 1) making/using provides a means of livelihood,
and 2) sharing distributes costs and benefits, and closes a feedback loop with
making/using.
This is the model that many are pursuing right now.
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7. The Five Commons
The Normal (Bell) Curve captures key elements of mass culture, mass
production, and mass media. The average, or center, is representative of the
majority of cases. Furthermore, difference and diversity are 1) marginalized
(pushed outward from the center horizontally), and 2) repressed (pushed
downward from the top).
The Power Law captures key elements of niche economics, distributed
production, and network culture. The average is not representative of the
majority of cases. Network culture explores and exploits difference and
diversity in “the long tail” to enhance flexibility and capture the benefits of
rapid innovation.
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8. The Five Commons
In many systems growth and decline are gradual, but in complex systems
phase transitions are the norm. Systems cross thresholds which trigger rapid
transformations and re-organizations. Emergence is mirrored by collapse.
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9. The Five Commons
The current environment is characterized by 1) changes in the shapes of
activity, and 2) changes in the magnitudes of activity. Consequently, change
is often rapid and unforeseeable, therefore unpredictable.
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10. The Five Commons
The Five Commons represents what might be thought of as a “minimally
necessary” set of practices to achieve a sustainable society.
The Food, Energy, and Thing Commons provide for human physical needs.
The Culture Commons allows for human expression, communication, and
memory. The Access Commons ensures the availability of medicine,
education, free speech, and social resources. These Five Commons are neither
all-inclusive nor mutually exclusive. They overlap and interweave in crucial
ways.
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11. The Five Commons
We “the Commoners” are the vital heart of 21st Century wealth-generating
ecologies. In each commons, the activities of participants drive the shift from
mass culture to power law dynamics.
Investing in these distributed, cooperative, infrastructures, is the task of our
time. Each of us can gain security from adaptability, and co-create wealth by
making, using, and sharing in the new environment.
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Forward Foundation / Future Forward Institute