Reclaiming the digital commons in the age of agentic AI
An acequia is a community-governed irrigation system. For four centuries in the American Southwest, families have owned their private land while collectively managing the water that sustains it. The mayordomo coordinates the flow. The parciantes—the members—contribute labor to maintain the ditch. No corporation owns the water. No state agency controls it. Private property flourishes because the commons is collectively governed. This is neither rule by capital nor rule by state. It is a third path.
## The Urgency Agentic AI is being born right now. Not chatbots you query—agents that act. Software that operates on your behalf, makes decisions, coordinates with other agents, runs continuously. To be useful, these agents will need access to your most intimate data: your photos, cameras inside and outside your home, microphones on smart speakers, your location 24/7, the patterns of your life. **The architecture determines the outcome.** If agents run in the cloud, data flows up. Centralization. Enclosure. If agents run on the edge—on your devices, serving from your domain—data stays where it is. You remain the owner.
## The Third Path You were given two choices: capitalism or socialism. Rule by capital or rule by state. This is a false binary. Capital can be collectively governed by those who depend on it—without the state. Since the 1600s, acequias have governed water in what is now New Mexico and Colorado. They predate the United States. They still function. **Private landowners. Shared infrastructure.** Each family owns their parcela—their land. But the water that makes the land productive flows through the acequia—the irrigation ditch that no single owner could build or maintain alone. The acequia is the commons. Not the land. The infrastructure that serves the land.
## The Common Pool Resource of Our Time The common pool resources of the digital age: - **Compute** — processing power to run your agents - **Storage** — memory for your data to persist - **Bandwidth** — capacity for your agents to communicate - **Power** — electricity to keep your infrastructure running - **Availability** — always-on presence when your devices sleep - **Accessibility** — public IPs that make your parcela reachable You contribute what you have. You draw what you need. The mayordomo coordinates the flow. The parciantes govern the rules. Private property, collectively irrigated.
## The Architecture **Your parcela:** Your devices running your agents, storing your data, serving your presence. Your browser is a server. Your identity is yours—cryptographic keys you hold. **The acequia:** Shared infrastructure connecting parcelas. Protocols for discovery, coordination, mutual backup. Not owned by a platform. Governed by the owners who depend on it. **Federated learning:** The network gets smarter without centralizing data. Intelligence emerges from the commons while privacy remains architectural. **The mayordomo:** Coordination nodes elected by the community. They route traffic, maintain directories, resolve disputes. Your butler, not your boss. **The parciantes:** You. And your neighbors. Private property federated into shared capability. Owners, not tenants.
## The Call Ownership is something you claim. By running your own infrastructure. By federating with other owners. By governing the commons together. Become a parciante. Form your acequia—around your watershed, your fireshed, your neighborhood, your craft, your cause. Build infrastructure you govern together. Let AI serve your commons, not extract from it. *Your land. Your water. Your agents. Your community. Your network. Your AI.*
Related
See also Acequia, Redfish Creed, Citizen Fire