Enlightenment can not be understood without thinking on the extensive use of technology. During the 18th century, a multitude of technical devices overflowed the fields of industry and war. And thus, as far as social consensus was made depend on the technical rigor, no social project could survive without measurement instruments. Such instruments acquired then the status of commons, as the knowledges and the objects produced by them. So, Enlightenment created an impressive amount of new commons, that being appropriate as public patrimony (by the Spanish Empire), they gave rise to local resistances (in the American Colonies).Peer reviewed