Sharing

Introductory Citation

= Sharing is a way of maximizing the utilization of idle productive goods owned by individuals. Just about any tool or appliance you need for a current project, but lack, is probably gathering dust on the shelf of someone within a few blocks of where you live. If the pooling of such idle resources doesn’t seem like much of a deal for the person with the unused appliances, keep in mind first that he isn’t getting anything at all out of them now, second that he may trade access to them for access to other people’s tools that he needs, and third that the arrangement may increase the variety of goods and services he has to choose from outside the wage system. - Kevin Carson [1]

Description

"Sharing is the joint use of a resource or space. In its narrow sense, it refers to joint or alternating use of an inherently finite good, such as a common pasture or a timeshared residence. It is also the process of dividing and distributing. Apart from obvious instances, which we can observe in human activity, we can also find many examples of this happening naturally in nature. When an organism takes in nutrition or oxygen for instance, its internal organs are designed to divide and distribute the energy taken in, to supply parts of its body that need it. Flowers divide and distribute their seeds. In a broader sense, it can also include the free granting of use rights to a good that is capable of being treated as a nonrival good, such as information. Still more loosely, "sharing" can actually mean giving something as an outright gift: for example, to "share" one's food really means to give some of it as a gift. Sharing figures prominently in gift economies, but also can play a significant role in market economies, for example in car sharing." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharing)

What is Sharing?

Chris Arkenberg:

"So what is sharing and why do we do it? At its simplest, sharing can be thought of as an exchange of information. Without diving into the wily esoterica of information theory it’s reasonable to say that information, for us humans, represents a collection of sensory inputs often imbued with some semantic meaning. So information is color, sound, words, data, etc...

Culture is an expression of such human-scale information. And, likewise, culture is an expression of the innate need to share. We share language to communicate. We share knowledge of crops and weather and medicine to support communities. We share our emotions, our fears and aspirations to express our inner lives and see ourselves reflected in others. We share art and aesthetics to convey the inexpressible. And we share the mechanics of manipulating matter to continually extrude the shell of technology that has enabled our populations to flourish and our lifespans to approach those of centenarians.

Sharing is an invaluable and valueless transaction fundamental to our daily lives. We are social animals all invested in a massive species-wide collaboration to survive and thrive. We share for mutual benefit, for altruism, for deferred returns, and, increasingly, because we are compelled to contribute to the global brain. Facebook & Twitter are perhaps the latest apotheosis of this shift towards the compulsive sharing of everything in our lives. And it is this condition that seems to represent something uniquely spiritual, or at least inchoate and just beyond rational apprehension, about our progression into the 21st century: the boundaries around the Other and shadows held within are falling to the illumination of the global consciousness.

And this isn’t some New Age hokum. We experience the lives of people in countries we’ve never been to. We see pictures of distant, foreign lands that look just like our own. We learn more and more about the similarities across cultures. We share who we are with those who were once considered foreign, barbaric, and alien. And with each new connection the fear of the Other dissolves into the familiarity of the Self. The twin engines of globalization and the internet are constructing a virtual commons in which we are all gathering to tell our stories and share our thoughts and emotions.

This radical shift has not been without consequence, of course, but it represents a deep, species-wide drive to get closer, to know each other, to share, and to better collaborate on the collective development of humanity and its place within the world." (http://shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-of-sharing)

Typology

Emily Doskow:

"Sharing to the First Degree:

Requires Cooperation + Minimal Planning

At the most basic level, sharing arrangements require little planning, time, or money. They can start or stop almost any time, sometimes quite spontaneously. Take carpooling to work, for example--that’s something you can start doing tomorrow with one other person. Many of us already do share at this level.

And as sharing increasingly becomes the societal norm, we will all probably share more in these ways:

• Potlucks or meal exchanges with neighbors or co-workers

• Borrowing and lending goods

• Babysitting exchange

• Dog walking exchange

• Harvesting and sharing fruit from neighborhood trees

• Sharing computer code or content

Sharing to the Second Degree:

Requires Cooperation + More Extensive Planning

Compared to sharing at the first degree, these sharing arrangements generally involve a larger number of people and/or sharing things with more value. They entail a higher degree of cooperation, more planning, a greater investment of time or money, a certain amount of administrative detail-work, and likely a written agreement among sharers. Sharing ownership of a car with a neighbor, for example, takes shared transportation to this second level.

Other examples:

• Sharing an in-home care provider for children, elders, or people with disabilities

• Sharing rental housing or ownership of a single family home

• Sharing yard space for food cultivation

• Babysitting co-op with multiple families

• Neighborhood tool lending “library” (which could be a shared shed where neighbors store their tools, or a list of tools each neighbor owns and is willing to lend)

• Food-buying club

• Neighborhood home repair group

Sharing to the Third Degree:

Requires Cooperation + Extensive Planning + Infrastructure

What’s next after carpooling and co-owning a car? How about a carsharing club? At the third degree of sharing, you might have ten neighbors sharing three cars. These neighbors will probably adopt systems for communicating, making decisions, managing money, keeping records, and so on. They will likely create a small non-profit or limited liability company (LLC) that will hold title and insurance to the cars. They’d probably adopt some technologies, like an online calendar for scheduling and numerical keypads that open and start the cars. As a result of creating such infrastructure, third degree sharing arrangements often have an identity independent of their individual members. In other words, even as members come and go, and even when there is complete turnover, the sharing arrangement remains and becomes a lasting community institution.

Here are some examples:

• Cohousing communities and housing cooperatives

• Community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs

• Cooperative groceries

• Parent-run cooperative preschools

• Offices, studios, commercial kitchens, and other workspaces shared among multiple entrepreneurs

• Community-wide tool lending libraries

• Cooperatives that facilitate sharing of resources and collective bargaining by businesses (such as an alpaca fiber cooperative that processes and sells fur from hundreds of small alpaca farms)

Sharing to the Fourth Degree:

Requires Cooperation + Extensive Planning + Infrastructure + Community-Wide Restructuring and Mobilization

Now we’re getting really ambitious: Picture a community where there are shared cars parked on every block. You reserve a car using your cell phone, punch in a code on the car door, get in, and go! Whether this is publicly or privately managed, launching such a program involves significant investment of time and resources and a rather complex system of administration. Taking sharing to the fourth degree can require getting government buy-in, mobilizing multiple players (legislators, investors, banks, developers, planners, etc.), or even restructuring our communities. While a shared car on every block is a dream yet to be realized, organizations like Zipcar (a business) and City Car Share (a nonprofit) are taking steps in the right direction.

Other examples of fourth degree sharing include:

• Dedication of public land to community gardening plots

• Expansion of public library systems to include lending of tools, equipment, and other goods

• City-wide bikesharing programs

• Official designation of casual carpooling parking lots and pick-up spots

• Planning of neighborhoods and design of housing to facilitate extensive common areas and community interaction

• City-wide wifi programs"

(http://shareable.net/blog/four-degrees-of-sharing)

Discussion

Janelle Orsi, with Emily Doskow:

From simple to complex sharing:

"Getting to the second, third, and fourth degrees takes work—but it’s work that people do every day. One part of this work is cultivating the personal and communication skills useful in sharing, such as the ability to say what we need and how we feel (not as easy as it sounds), and to hear the same from others. As we begin cooperating to higher degrees, we’ll develop skills to sort through diverse needs, feelings, beliefs, and communication styles and find sharing arrangements that work for everyone involved.

Beyond personal development, there’s the need to design our sharing arrangements in ways that balance everyone’s needs for personal space, solitude, predictability, security, spontaneity, and our old favorite, convenience. At first glance, sharing might seem to threaten each of these needs, but a well-designed sharing system could actually enhance them. Some cohousing communities have achieved this beautifully, through a careful balancing of personal living spaces and well-managed community areas.

Then, in addition to protecting our individual needs, there is the challenge of preserving and nurturing that which is shared. This means grappling with the “tragedy of the commons” --the theory that individuals, acting in self-interest, will make choices that result in the eventual depletion or degradation of shared resources. It’s a challenge, and our resource-depleted planet is the poster child for such a tragedy. Thus, as we design systems for sharing, we will incorporate values, standards, and management that ensure the sustainability of what we share. At the same time, in a more sharing world, the way individuals make choices will likely change. To the extent that we see our personal wellbeing enhanced by sharing and cooperation, we will look more often at the bigger picture, and make choices that help the commons to thrive.

Finally, there are technical, logistical, and structural tasks required in order to take sharing to new levels. Sharing is a growth industry because so many people will participate in these tasks: the software engineers who are creating the web platforms for sharing, the architects who design community-oriented housing, the city planners who design cities around sharing, and the lawyers who help community groups adopt legal structures and agreements for sharing. They will work alongside mediators, facilitators, educators, realtors, developers, accountants, entrepreneurs, scholars, and others who can contribute to the creation of a more sharing world." (http://trustcurrency.blogspot.com/2009/11/four-degrees-of-sharing.html)

More Information

1. Yochai Benkler: Sharing Nicely, essay