One group possesses the book of knowledge, claiming both authority and the right to interpret the world, including the lives of those said to be without the book. Their understanding is not genuine comprehension but rather a form of epistemic domination, where interpretation functions as surveillance, categorization, division and privilege. Or else, knowledge is framed as a static object to be passively consumed, producing poorer, less nuanced understanding or reactive-tactical misunderstanding. Or else, symbolic capital (prestige, honor, or legitimacy) is accumulated and recognized within a social field. While universities help formalize and convert various forms of capital (like inherited cultural knowledge) into recognized credentials that carry social distinction and authority.

A shared epistemic commons: instead of wholly asymmetric possession, people gather around a plurality of books, sentences and the nonlexical. This shift refuses the notion of knowledge as a monopoly or credentialed property and imagines knowledge as fundamentally co-read, co-interpreted, co-written and co-owned. Knowledge is framed not as a static object but as many situated and relational processes, as emerging from human-nonhuman actor-networks. The dangers inherent in flattening authority and potentially weighting knowledge claims equally can be mitigated if the hybrid commons emphasizes contextualized authority and modularity rather than rigid hierarchy, uses transparent scaffolds to, for example, distinguish evidence-based claims from speculation and cultivates reflexive epistemic literacy among participants.