This article reinterprets Lyotard's argument in "The Postmodern Condition" as a basis for a radical political economy approach to knowledge capitalism focusing on post-industrialism in order to put the case that education and knowledge are increasingly becoming part of a globally integrated world capitalism (IWC) that is structured through emerging global information systems and new media networks. The article embraces the possibility of "open knowledge production" as an area of intellectual activity driven by an ethic of collaboration as a basis for a reconstituted public sphere.