Old School Commons

Like your public library

Today’s update comes from my local library, an understated Victorian building concealed by palm trees and curated shrubbery. Have I done a U-turn on my last post and flown nomad class to Byron Bay?

Nope. I write from the decidedly non-tropical realm of East London, perennial locus of the dispossessed. Once it was the downtrodden, the victims of Jack the Ripper, then the Krays, then Jews, Muslims and now Hipsters (note to self: article about the artful dispossession of white hipsters in East London).

This library has a study space. It is quiet, with adequate desks and chairs. It has blazing fast wifi. It is formed from the rather lavish function room, when it’s not being used for a function, which is most of the time.

And it’s totally free.

Why would I head into town and pay north of £50 a day for a hotdesk surrounded by entitled corporateers on mind-numbing Zoom calls, or a coffeeshop next to Google HQ, my face digitally scanned 50,000 just getting there?

There is only one toilet. And there is no Ursula K Le Guin on the SciFi shelf, but these are forgivable, if not fixable. And beside the point.

The commons has taken an utter hammering over the last two decades. From libraries, the NHS, the street to waterways and wildernesses, much needed cash has been magicked into the hands of pink-striped shirted villains in the City.

They don’t need a commons. They have side gardens ten times the size of your entire living area. They have quadruple screen rigs and fibre optic cable as thick as your arm.

They think they’re smart—they are in way but at the expense of the commons. Few entrepreneurs create anything. They insert themselves into the middle of a food chain and suck, like a parasite.

So if your local library has only one toilet and no Ursula K Le Guin on the SciFi shelf, you know who to point the finger at. Try pointing fingers in the stone and glass mausoleum of humanity they call The City and you’ll probably be apprehended. Certainly face-scanned 100,000 times just getting there.

How many unused function rooms are there in the City? In Google HQ? Think they’d let you use a bit of desk and wifi in the downtime? About as likely as MetaSatan helping you access your own account lie in your own grave in Metaverse Lost.

Old school commons, eh? We’ll miss it when it’s gone.