J. David Goodman writes in the New York Times…
Can Americans share? Or, at least, not steal?
That question hung over the rows of identical fire-red bicycles lined up last week for the start of Capital Bikeshare in Washington, the nation’s largest bike-sharing program.
Similar programs also began this year in Denver and Minneapolis, with another to start in Miami this fall. At the same time, start-up companies with names like SnapGoods, Share Some Sugar and NeighborGoods are trying to make money by using social networks to let people borrow or lend their stuff, either free or for a fee.
These companies are looking to join a familiar list — including Netflix, Zipcar and Pandora, the online radio service — built on access to goods and services, rather than ownership.
But the question is whether most consumers would ever accept time share ownership of a bike or a blender. After a bike share program began in Denver, one gubernatorial candidate in Colorado attacked the program as un-American.
But some scholars say that the Internet — by fostering collaboration on a communal, open platform — has changed the way Americans think about sharing and ownership. Collaborative habits online are beginning to find expression in the real world.
“I thought that online was an exception,” said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, whose coming book, “The Penguin and the Leviathan,” focuses on the explosion of cooperative endeavors, both online and off. “I now am more confident that the phenomenon is not limited to online but is a general phenomenon of human behavior.”
So far, he said, there have been no formal studies into whether the Internet has affected offline cooperation or attitudes about ownership…
This kind of offline sharing happens everyday in via Front Porch Forum in our Vermont service region.
Thousands of Vermonters have made Front Porch Forum into an incredible platform that connects neighbors & builds community. Every day members return lost pets, organize block parties, lend rakes, & exchange ideas about a recent city council meeting.
Building on all this activity, I’m excited to invite my fellow Burlington-area residents to participate in a Global Work Party on 10/10/10, being coordinated by our friends at 350.org. It’s a worldwide day to get to work on community solutions that fight climate change. This issue affects almost every part of our lives, and many of the solutions lie in small, locally connected neighbors getting to work together.
We hope you will take this opportunity to join hundreds of people in Burlington (and thousands of people across the globe) and commit to taking action on 10/10/10.
Here are some action ideas from 350.org:
— host a block bicycle fix-up
— weatherize your neighbor’s house for the winter
— launch or showcase your business’ sustainability initiatives
— harvest a local community garden
— host a local foods potluck or climate film screening
— and much MORE
Check out projects already planned for Burlington on 10/10/10 at http://www.350Burlington.org and sign up your own event at http://www.350.org
At 4pm on 10/10/10 I hope you’ll join me at 350.org‘s Celebration Rally at Battery Park. I’ll share a few words then about what’s next for the FPF community.
How about your #VT town? From Greg Sterling today…
I was alerted to this intriguing data point by ValPak’s Twitter feed: according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 21% of US adults do not use the Internet. That works out to about 50 million people (figuring the US adult population is about 240M).
Interesting data to keep in mind… 79% is a huge proportion… but it’s not 100%. It makes Front Porch Forum‘s high take rates all the more remarkable… greater than 40% of households subscribe in dozens of neighborhoods and towns in our pilot region.
And it makes projects like e-Vermont that much more important. Check out e-Vermont’s new website and, if you live in Vermont, get your community to apply for the second round of grants by Nov. 17, 2010! From e-Vermont…
e-Vermont’s new web site, www.e4vt.org, is the central spot to keep updated on the e-Vermont Community Broadband Project. This two-year initiative is helping rural Vermont towns take full advantage of the Internet to create jobs, drive school innovation, provide social services, and increase civic involvement. e-Vermont is not stringing cable or fiber, but is working to make better use of broadband where it is available.
The new e-Vermont Partnership, led by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, is already working together with selected communities statewide to provide digital tools and in-depth training. Twelve more towns will be selected by the end of 2010 to be part of this project. The new website has details on how to apply prior to the November 17 deadline. It also carries updates on the exciting work in the first 12 e-communities, and includes a calendar of upcoming workshops and conferences that will share what is being learned in these pilot towns with communities around Vermont.
For further info, you can also reach e-Vermont at 802 225-6091, or Helen_at_vtrural_dot_org.
Jill Kiedaisch at the Orton Family Foundation offers good insights through her writing. So I was especially pleased to see her attention focused on Front Porch Forum this week. Here’s a tidbit (full post)…
But the coolest thing about FPF in my book is that it upends the assumed role of the Internet in our lives. It asserts that our online lives don’t have to be distinct from our offline lives—that they can merge in healthy, useful, positive, reciprocal ways. And even better than that, Front Porch Forum encourages us to reconnect with each other in person, tªte- -tªte, to have conversations and shake hands and share babysitters and roto-tillers and generally help each other out. It pulls us out of our digital isolation and pushes us back into our front yards and onto the street, out to the park or the playground or the farmer’s market or the local garage to see what’s going on, to remember who we are, and even who we want to be, as parents and friends and citizens. It helps us be neighbors.
The troubling results of a survey were released by Legal & General in the United Kingdom this week… Next Door Strangers. Here’s some expert commentary and sample press coverage. From the summary (my emphasis added)…
A survey of 2,000 British residents, covering a range of ages and geographic locations, revealed that more than one quarter (27%) of us say we “do not trust” our neighbours and most of us (59%) feel we neither have a lot in common with nor share the same values (44%) as them.
The report also found that the majority of British residents don’t know their neighbours’ names and wouldn’t recognise them if they passed them in the street (70%). According to the research, on average, we would only immediately recognise just over one in three (37%) of the people from our street.
British neighbourhoods are divided on values and sense of community and responsibility:
- More than a third (35%) of us don’t believe that we should have any responsibility for the safety or security of our neighbourhoods
- Nearly half (44%) don’t accept any responsibility for the safety or security of a neighbour’s property
- One in four (25%) of us admit we’d do nothing if we saw someone hanging around our neighbours’ home suspiciously, either out of fear, embarrassment or indifference
- The majority (61%) never socialise with their neighbours, not even occasionally
- Half of us (50%) do not even enjoy “spending time with” our neighbours.
In contrast to the traditional view of neighbourly duties, 42% of us would not trust our neighbours with our homes when we are not there and over one in three, (36%) when we are on holiday. 78% of respondents said they do not share keys with their neighbours.
This has clear implications for home security. Our findings indicate that people feel less responsibility for looking out for suspicious activity in their street, which, along with taking practical security measures, is one of the best ways of discouraging burglars.
I’d love to see this survey run in the United States… similar results to be expected? And then to see it run in Front Porch Forum‘s pilot service region… I’d wager the sense of community and involvement is significantly better. Also from the report…
Social networking online is the most modern form of socialising and getting to know people. Indeed, it seems some of the values of neighbourliness have shifted online. Many of us are now more ‘neighbourly’ with people on social networks than with those in our street: 34% of social networkers are ‘friends’ with or ‘follow’ people they’ve never met before on Facebook or Twitter but fewer than one in five (19%) are online friends with an actual real-world neighbour.
Only 8% have bothered to check if a neighbour is on a social network site.
But online tools are also a powerful and popular way of learning more about and engaging with your neighbourhood.
Quotation posted by Jillian on Front Porch Forum today…
It is easier to be a “humanitarian” than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a “patriot” than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a “civic leader” than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task. —Sydney J. Harris
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more