The Terror within Postmodernism

My question has to do with the terror that haunts Lyotard's writing on postmodernsim. The terror described is the threat of eliminating the opposing player in a language game (46). "The stronger the "move," the more likely it is to be denied the minimum consensus, precisely because it changes the rules of the game upon which consensus has been based" (63). In this "realm of terror" the social bond is destroyed since the game is being played at the level where the player is either operational or disappears (xxiv). ("Do this or else you'll never speak again," 45).

In the opening of the book where Lyotard presents and grapples with the question of "Who Will Know" (6), he discusses the commodification of information in the postmodern age. Information is now more mobile and subject to piracy. The effect upon the subject of such information is a feeling of perpetual debt with respect to the social bond. The subject's work is never over within society since information at any moment may move on or be stolen away. As in the language game played in "the realm of terror," the postmodern subject must be efficient or lose his or her place within the game.

Yet if terror breaks the social bond, while the state of information today perpetually binds the subject to it, then what is the role of terror within Lyotard's exploration of knowledge? Lyotard ends his book calling for free access to databanks and memory in order to allow for politics that respect the public's desire for justice and desire for the unknown (67). This point is in opposition to the narrative of the computerization of society that would involve the use of terror in its "dream"-like, totalizing explanation. Does this call for open source information not contradict his earlier point on the commodification of information? Is terror a positive, regulatory force or a negative, harmful force within knowledge structures? How does it function in relation to the power of knowledge institutions in postmodernity? Finally, is terror the price one pays for an illusion of some real unity, as Lyotard mentions in the appendix?