Share-eet: 2012

At the moment I am gathering some ideas to launch the website for members of Transition Helensburgh in order to put together this sort of community library where all the items would be listed for members to see what is available.

I believe it is an innovative idea that can change the way we consume / buy stuff bringing back the human side to interactions.

The research for similar type of projects out there resulted in various websites showcasing different community projects from swapping items to houses. Even a very interested one connecting growers to people with land to share. It's called: http://www.landshare.net/ but nothing like the idea I had because my idea involves no money at all.

I stumbled upon an american website where Rachel states:

“A powerful change is happening; one that recognizes the value of experiences and human relationships over anonymous transactions and the endless acquisition of more stuff.”

I thought it was great and started to looked into the psychology of the process we are going through and will try to explain the rise of "collaborative consumption", not my words but Rachel Botsman ( http://www.rachelbotsman.com/ ) and let' see if we agree that it is not a short-term trend but a powerful cultural and economic force reinventing not just what we consume but how we consume.

I'm going to start with a simple example. How many of us have book, cds lying around our house? Sometimes we would to get rid of them and would probably sell them on eBay.

There is a powerful dynamic that has huge commercial and cultural implications as its play. Namely that technology is enabling trust between strangers.

We are sharing collaborative ways, we now live in a global village where we can mimic the ties that used to happen face to face. But on a scale and in ways that have never been possible before. So what’s actually happening is that social networks and real time technologies are taking us back where we’re bartering, trading, swapping, sharing, but they’re being reinvented into dynamic and appealing forms.

What I find fascination is that we have actually wired our world to share whether is at the office, school, facebook and that is creating an economy of what is mine is yours.

We are moving from passive consumers to creatives to highly enabled collaborators. What's happening is that the internet is removing the middle man. Sharing is happening at phenomenal rates.

Let take YouTube for example, in every single minute there are 72 hours of youtube movies that are being uploaded.

We are born to share and cooperate, we are moving from a culture of me to culture of we. Is because of mobile collaboration. We now live in a connected age where we can locate anyone, anytime, in real-time from a device.

Perhaps with the global recession and the economic difficulties since 2008 we decided to say: no more.

And.. this is what we came to realise

* A renewed belief in the importance of community, a very redefinition of what friend an neighbour really mean.

* A torrent of peer to peer social networks and real time technologies fundamentally changing the way we behave.

* Pressing unresolved environmental concerns.

* A global recession that has fundamentally shocked consumer behaviour (in my view this is what triggered it).

These 4 drivers are fusing together and creating the big shift towards the 21 century defined by Rachel Botsman's collaborative consumption.

We are at an inflection point where the sharing behaviours throughout sites such as (flicker, twitter) are becoming second nature and being applied to offline areas of our everyday lives.

From morning commutes to fashion web design to the way we grow food, we are consuming collaborating once again.

I believe also our generation, our relationship to satisfying what we want is far less tangible than any other previous generation.

I don't want the dvd; I want the movie it carries

i don't want the cd but the music it plays, in other words I don't want stuff. I want the experiences it fulfils. Where access is better than possessions. Now as our possessions dematerialise into the cloud a blurry line is appearing between what's mine and what's yours and what's ours.

The more we share the less we waste, and we really need to stop wasting.

Sharing is also better for the greater good. It builds community, connects neighbours that may otherwise be strangers, and raises the standard of living for everyone. Collaboration with your peers in the age of social networks breeds trust, solidarity and even friendship, without sacrificing personal freedom and quality of life. As Botsman states, technology makes sharing frictionless and fun.

So why not share? Some might argue the risks are not worth the gains. No one can deny that there isn’t a degree of vulnerability you accept when connecting with people you don’t know. But actual statistics show that negative outcomes associated with sharing are pretty low.

There are sites such as Zimride who mitigates risk by holding users accountable for their reputation through peer review, by requiring a Facebook login to ensure user identity, and by displaying the verified networks the user is a member of. This all results in a system that naturally rewards users who share more personal info and roots out users who aren’t trustworthy. You also have the option to communicate directly with users before booking a ride. As a Zimrider, you always have a choice of who you ride with. http://www.zimride.com/ (carpool and rideshare community in the US and Canada).

So how about transitioning to sharing more?

Sharing has to become huge because it reinvents an economic system that is in desperate need of improvement. Globalisation and a shared economy are now facts of life and people are starting to take advantage of this virtually small world by connecting with their community to make their lives better.

Now the new mindset is not about what I can do for me, but what we can do for us. And together, we can all have greener grass.

What do you think of transitioning to a better, more efficient way of living in the city, town or community you live?

I guess we all have visions of a better world, at least I do.

What appears to be lacking in most people is the way to visualise it as a reality. Well... I have a plan, a brilliant idea and I can see just how a transitional system could enable the idea to become a reality.

I have shared yesterday my idea with wonderful, enthusiastic individuals to bring about such a transition. After the meeting I left with a strong feeling that we could easily implement this idea in the community where I live: Helensburgh

The whole idea is to move to a method for the distribution of goods and services in a resource-based economy (see info about Jacque Fresco at the bottom) without the use of money.

The way we could achieve this is by starting to get more organised. Let's say we had a bank of goods, similar to a public library where one could use the good for a certain time then return it to make it available for someone else to borrow.

We all have items at home which we bought but only used it once and then this item remains in a cupboard or garage collecting dust for the rest of its life. Well, we could have an impact in the economy and in the carbon footprint by sharing a bit more.

Imagine you had some garden tools and you wouldn't mind somebody else borrowing them and returning them.
I will launch this project where my friends and neighbours in Helensburgh will let me know what items they have available, I will organise a bank of items and share the list for everybody to see what's available.

Imagine you need an item, before buying it, you could easily check if it's available - request it - use it for free and return it to the owner. How great would that be!!!

If you are interested in innovative ideas for the future please check Jacque Fresco's website. I believe he is a Genius!

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Share-eet

Trailer

Launched on social networks

Website

Innovative Idea ~ the psychology behind it

Transitioning to sharing