The Great Enclosure is what the foundation-model companies are doing to the cognitive commons - our data, art, languages and institutional knowledge - much as the English enclosures fenced off common land. And it's the business model, plain and simple.
How the word moved
I named it in April 2026 as the fifth thread of the AI Polyconflict, in the essay on cognitive imperialism. In May I kept pulling on it in Cognitive Sovereignty.
In my words
"The enclosure is not incidental to the technology."
from Cognitive Sovereignty, 7 May 2026
Related
- Related Cognitive Imperialism - the enclosure is the form cognitive imperialism takes.
- Related Public Intelligence - a commons approach to AI is my answer to it.