Working definition. Stewardship is care extended through time. A steward exercises power without confusing temporary control with absolute ownership.
Inherited meaning
The term comes from managing a household or estate on another’s behalf and has grown into an ethic of tending land, knowledge, institutions, and shared resources. Its central insight is that some things are received before they are made and must remain viable after we are gone.
Meaning in the imagination economy
Models are built from inherited languages, images, labour, energy, and cultural memory. The imagination economy cannot be healthy if these become frictionless inputs for short-term extraction. Stewardship asks how capability can enlarge the future commons rather than exhaust the conditions that made it possible.
What changes in practice
Track what the work consumes, inherits, and leaves behind. Preserve provenance, compensate contribution where possible, design for maintenance, and prefer choices that keep future options open.