Search Results

Chapter 1 examines the contemporary revival of sharing as collaborative consumption in mediated and particularly commercial forms, with examples from food sharing in particular. It reports surveys of sharing behaviors, highlighting the role of the Millennial demographic in the growth of the sharing economy. It examines the technical, environmental, economic and cultural drivers of the sharing revival, especially the transfer of norms from sharing on the internet to the real world. It explores the economic logics and disruption of sharing, outlines how incumbent businesses are responding to the sharing paradigm and begins to examine the risks and benefits of an intrusion of commercial sharing into the social realm.

This chapter examines popular and academic concerns that the sharing economy offers workers a raw deal—lower salaries, fewer benefits, and little job security—and that workers have essentially been forced to take sharing-economy jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, all of which have been masked by the communitarian rhetoric of sharing-economy proponents. The chapter does not dispute critics’ characterization of sharing economy practices as unsavory, but rather takes issue with the notion that contingent employment is necessarily a bad thing for workers. The chapter argues that concerns about the increasing precarity of labor are rooted in a rejection of the market and of money as inimical to valued social bonds. The antisocial thesis inspires a critical interpretation of money and the market as potentially liberatory.

The introduction outlines the challenges and opportunities of humanity’s increasingly urban future, setting out a case for sharing cities as a response to those challenges. It defines the ‘sharing paradigm’ as a cultural and political, as well as economic transformation. It explores the critical concepts associated with the sharing paradigm and maps its coverage against emerging terminology applied by other. It also introduces the necessary socio-cultural and political changes needed to produce ‘sharing cities’.

This afterword looks at some of the most feasible ‘next-wave’ technology-driven changes, then at how the world market for government IT may change in the next two decades, and finally at alternative scenarios of how governments may handle the development of their IT systems. The study period has coincided with a massive increase in interest in government IT, as the spread of central government e-government initiatives across the world took on some aspects of the earlier dot.com boom in e-commerce. A key theme for the coming decades in all seven case study countries will be identity management. In taxation, social security, and immigration, technological trends are requiring ever greater innovation in terms of reliable identification and authentication techniques. Five feasible technology-driven changes with particular relevance for government over the coming decades are identified: web-based utility computing for some agencies; a shared-services mixed economy; spread of zero trend technologies; semantic Web; and graphical interface to governmental services.

Chapter 8 examines the so-called sharing economy (better termed the slicing economy) in the marketplace for products and services. It considers the prospects and limits of swapping full-strength ownership for on-demand access. The chapter also shows how indivisibilities crop up in product bundling, sizing, pricing, and standardization, with implications for consumer choice. Although “long tail” dynamics have increased product variety in many domains, high fixed costs for introducing a new offering can push toward standardization and leave those with less popular tastes out in the cold. Price discrimination and product bundling can alter the mix of goods offered and consumed. Bundling can also have interesting cognitive effects, including attenuation of the sunk-cost fallacy. Because the traditional ownership model bundles possession over time, such effects are important to study as we move to models based on thinner slices of access. Finally, the lumpiness of money itself can impact product markets and the stickiness of prices, as Coca-Cola's maintenance of the five-cent Coke for over seven decades vividly illustrates.

Chapter 3 examines the so-called sharing economy which is premised on establishing ways to redefine the boundaries between product ownership and use and creating opportunities for collaboration between producers and consumers. The most popular digital platforms extend already familiar notions of peer-to-peer provisioning to livery services, overnight accommodations, and clothing exchanges but there is considerable divergence between idealized conceptions of the sharing economy and actual performance. While supporters of the sharing economy continue to describe these developments as evidence of spreading mutuality, detractors regard them as another manifestation of growing reliance on contingent labor and spreading economic insecurity.

The case study describes the boom in commercial, mediated sharing in San Francisco and the associated values shift amongst millennials. It highlights the city’s efforts to leverage and support technology led growth as a ’smart city’ and its response to the growth and impacts of sharing platforms such as Airbnb and Lyft. It outlines the emerging debates over appropriate regulation and governance for the sharing economy.

This chapter turns to linguistic matters. It explores how, despite their focus on commercial labour intermediation, platforms were originally cast in a different light, operating under the mantle of a ‘sharing economy’. Superficial as this may seem, language matters—not least as a driver of regulatory approaches. To understand the gig economy, it is crucial that we look behind the language of innovation and technology, of sharing and collaborative consumption, and of ‘gigs’ and ‘tasks’. This chapter first focuses on arguments that the gig economy should not be regulated at all, discerning multiple iterations of this approach, with varying degrees of sophistication. At its crudest, this is the story that the law stands in the way of innovation and should leave ‘disruptive’ businesses well alone. At a more sophisticated level, we then encounter different proposals for new forms of regulation.

The case study highlights the socio-cultural origins of sharing models in Seoul, providing some context on the Korean communitarian cultural concept of jeong. It highlights the leading role of city authorities in stimulating sharing enterprises and behaviour with examples of initiatives supported and developed. It identifies how Seoul has brought human aspects to the fore in its expression of the smart city concept, rather than the technology. It notes also the historical emergence of co-production in Seoul, and its role in helping consolidate democratic governance; and outlines contemporary activity to promote co-governance, transparency and public participation.

This chapter begins by considering the emergence of the sharing economy, which brings consumers cheaper access and convenience. But it also deprives consumers of some rights that are commonly associated with property ownership. This chapter then proposes several ways to combat the erosion of ownership. Legal reform faces many hurdles, but there are still several steps legislators and courts can take: first, false claims of ownership such as “buy now” or “own” should be targeted to improve consumer information; second, the pervasive use of form contracts needs to be curbed; third, consumers need to be freed from the restrictions imposed by DRM; lastly, courts also need to reinvigorate the principle of patent exhaustion and reform copyright law. Technological developments, including using block chain technology to record ownership interests in digital assets, can also help ensure meaningful personal property rights.

This essay takes a programmatic look at the theoretical concerns posed regarding community, examining two different movements, the Occupy movement and the Sharing economy, in terms of interruptions or breaks in dominant structures. It continues to argue that it is possible to see these breaks with the perpetuating dominant structures as instances of the formation of a metonymic community. The spontaneity and spatial contiguity of such movements and moments are organized around the contingent circumstances of participants rather than mediated by an overarching structure. While the identification of such new and defiant structures is tantalizing, this paper exercises caution, taking into account the risks of thinking the collective. It does, however, assimilate these two exemplars of unfolding communal structures as defying any sort of master narrative, and in doing so, provides practical examples of thinking the contingent and the communal beyond an oppositional paradigm.

Chapter 4 begins with Ian Bogost’s satirical Facebook game Cow Clicker and its send-up of the “gamification” movement to add quantification and algorithmic thinking to many facets of everyday life. Such games trouble the boundaries between work and play, as do much more serious forms of gamification like Uber and the high-tech warehouse workers whose every second and step are measured for efficiency. Taken together, these new models of work herald a novel form of alienated labor for the algorithmic age. In our science fiction present, humans are processors handling simple tasks assigned by an algorithmic apparatus. Drawing on the historical figure of the automaton, a remarkable collection of Mechanical Turk-powered poetry titled Of the Subcontract, and Adam Smith’s conception of empathy in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, the chapter explores the consequences of computational capitalism on politics, empathy, and social value.

The first half of this chapter introduces the scope, argument, and theoretical orientation of the book. It also summarizes the debates surrounding the antisocial thesis in queer theory and offers a brief defence of this line of thinking. The second half of the chapter contains a summary of each of the remaining chapters and reiterates the overall argument of the book: that concerns about playbor, automation, and the sharing economy mask a deeper anxiety about the degradation of social bonds, and that this anxiety does not simply express an attachment to these bonds, but attempts to restore them by calling readers back to the social.

Chapter 6 analyzes a new form of economy, enabled by ICTs, digital platforms, and smart devices to connect transactors (sharers or buyers and sellers) who may not have been able to cooperate otherwise. It provides an overview of the phenomenon of “the platform revolution” (from classic value chain logic to platform business logic). It goes on to explain different types of platform (innovation platform, transaction platform, integration platform), the principles of platform business (network effects, the distribution power law, asymmetric growth and competition) and the tacit cooperative strategies of suppliers, platform providers, and customers. Cooperation is tacit—providers do not interact and customers do not interact, except through ratings. The platform system is set up to maintain this condition. The chapter concludes with an overview of platform governance.

Using the so-called “sharing economy” or on-demand economy as a jumping off point, this chapter considers the logic and commodification of the gift. Early users of Airbnb, a digital platform that allows homeowners to offer their residences for short-term rentals, would often leave gifts for their hosts. These gifts spotlight the home as both an intimately personal space and as a zone of commerce, both emotionally and economically dense with relationships. Airbnb heightens the contradictions of these relationships. Leaving gifts after an Airbnb stay imparts a sense of connection and belonging, despite the short-term nature of the relationship and its mediation by money. Are such gifts payments? Are they expressions of a desire to connect? The author concludes that the gift maintains its relevance despite the asset monetization of everyday life represented by the sharing economy.

This chapter is about the social economy, social exclusion and inclusion. SMEs not only sustain production and services but also support a renewed social focus with many breakthrough social innovations in what is now called the “Sharing Economy”. However, the skills gap remains a serious challenge for those most damaged by industrial losses – particularly among youth. The concentration of foreigners and ethnic minorities in the poorest neighbourhoods also challenges the European ideal of social cohesion.

This chapter discusses three major changes resulting from the emerging communication technologies. It addresses the new forms of shaping relations online. Friendships, intimacy, the rise of weak ties, as well as an increased fluidity of relations are discussed. Next, the chapter addresses the demise of expert knowledge. Starting with McDonaldization of higher education and the rise of anti-intellectual sentiments, the chapter addresses the new trends in democratizing knowledge. While recognizing highly positive aspects of the turn, such as citizen science, Wikipedia, or free/open source movement, it also addresses the darker and more troubling processes, such as anti-scientific sentiments, pseudotheories, and the takeover of knowledge production and distribution by quacks. Finally, the chapter focuses on sharing economy. By problematizing the “sharing” premise, as well as by showing the impact of the ongoing change reaching far beyond economy itself, the chapter introduces the notion of collaborative society, as better covering the social change we witness.