Commodified knowledge

I understand and somewhat agree with Lyotard’s statement that the mercantilization of knowledge has caused it to become a saleable commodity. The commodification of knowledge gives it an eerie resemblance to software: just as we buy base software and have it be continually upgraded, knowledge is produced to be sold, which is then consumed in order to make a “new” set of knowledge. Lyotard’s pessimistic view that knowledge is no longer made for the sake of knowledge itself is true: his harsh critique of the university is testament to that- the student no longer seeks information for information sake, rather to see how that information can be useful for them.

However, there is still a part of me that wonders if commodified knowledge totally excludes knowledge for its own sake. Can they (and are they) live side by side?
I also have to disagree with how Lyotard completely dehumanizes knowledge. After all, I don’t believe that the commodification of knowledge is a consequence of new technologies as Lyotard seems to imply. Computer languages are not knowledge within themselves, merely objective things while knowledge is something more subjective. This must be true to Lyotard’s own relativism: there can be no metanarrative of knowledge transforming into commodity; rather, knowledge is subject to the powers of labor product that need such knowledge.

As such, I think that Lyotard’s imagining of “databanks” is an inappropriately dehumanized way of thinking of commodified knowledge. Instead, we must look at outsourced customer service centers, cells of Korean animators, workers at the assembly line: these are the shape and form of commodifed knowledge.

And if people, and not mere technological innovations, are the real source of commodifed knowledge, how can we tell them that they have lost their use-value, their individuality? And moreover, how long before this “commodified knowledge” consumes itself to progress to a new set of knowledge- namely that they are being used and underappreciated? What will these “highly developed societies” do then?