I ran across this TED Talk recently and thought it seemed relevant to what we've been discussing. Rachel Botsman argues that the internet has led to a movement she refers to as "collaborative consumption," which describes the recent explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, renting, trading, etc. This has led to an overall decrease of emphasis placed on worth of the material good, and more on the end result it delivers (e.g., the hole a drill provides is more important than the drill itself). She cites some obvious websites such as Craigslist, eBay, and Netflix, as well as some lesser known ones (at least to me) like Swap.com, which allows users the ability to make a list of things they want and things they have to trade; it then automatically arranges trades between users. Do you agree with her statement that the internet is contributing to a culture of sharing? Has "collaborative consumption" influenced the current "green" movement?
Matt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this. I am hoping that some TED talks make their way into student facilitations. I almost substituted the facilitations with an assignment that would have had every student choose a TED talk to highlight in the class. I didn't do it because it would have been hard to keep a narrative thread in the course, but maybe I will try it down the line.
As for this talk and your question, I think that in some ways this might be true. She connects it to the idea that access trumps ownership and now that most content is digital, there are singular devices (computers and cell phones) that make other objects obsolete. In class today when everyone was talking about how they have to sleep with their phone because it acts as their alarm clock, I was wondering what was wrong with owning an alarm clock. The reason is probably connected to this condition of obsolescence through convergence (the converging of different technologies into one).
I love the drill metaphor. After last year's multiple snowstorms my wife tried to convince me to get a snow blower. While we have been getting a lot of snow recently I just couldn't justify the expense. I would use the snow blower maybe for 15 minutes a year. I live in a cul de sac and a couple of neighbors own snow blowers. I have thought about asking them to rent one from them. Can we imagine a situation where neighbors get together and purchase one riding lawn mower, one snow blower, one power washer, one drill, collectively? Again I think the answer might come down to age. Does your generation buy into her argument that we don't want to own things? I am pretty sure my generation doesn't agree. It would be a nice change though.
It is hard to imagine a situation where neighbors share items commonly owned individually. As she points out, it often comes down to trust. In many respects, we're more confident doing business, or sharing, with people over the internet because they carry around a record of every past transaction as well as an approval rating. Whether my generation is less inclined to own things, I am unsure (we still seem awfully materialistic), but our trust in others is probably shaped by the transactions we perform on the internet.
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