“协作”消费模式的兴起

    协作消费（collaborative consumption）这个概念似乎可以用来描述了从在线影片租赁商Netflix到纽约公园坡粮食合作社（Park Slope Food Co-op）的一切。它被“富有创造力、想要改变世界的企业家们”称为一场“革命”。拥护者们声称，它以分享和对等网络为基础，是“亢奋消费”的良药。但是，它所催生的一些理念以及打着它的旗号出现的一些主张看起来更像是传统资本主义减少了负罪感的版本，而并不是什么具有革命性的经济模式。分享就意味着关爱？或者说，分享就是货币化？究竟什么是“协作消费”？

    我第一次听到“协作消费”这个词是雷切尔•波特曼在2010年TED大会上的讲话。她创造这个词语来描述一种新的大众消费模式。这种模式有可能不那么浪费，更加大众化，更加廉价，似乎也更加理性。在波特曼的讲话中，网上租车公司Zipcar、Netflix和物品交换网站Swaptree等例子被用来说明一种新的消费模式：网络服务使得汽车或DVD等物品能够在各成员间共同使用或重新分配，从而使所有权文化变成过去。“你需要的只是眼，为什么要跑去买钻子呢？”波特曼问道。他说，普通钻子在其生命期内总计只会被使用12到13分钟。她指出，向邻居借钻子，甚或把自己的钻子租出去可以解决我们目前的“亢奋消费”模式所带来的问题，同时减少金钱和材料的浪费，因为人们一心想要拥有的东西实际上他们只会用一两次而已。起初我认为这听起来相当合理，但当我继续探究这种新的经济观点时，我开始产生了怀疑。

    我第二次听到“协作消费”这个词语是在去年秋天举行的SHARENY大会上。这个大会由帕森斯设计学院（Parsons）和《分享杂志》（ShareableMagazine）举办，是协作观念的真正盛会。会议演讲嘉宾的专业领域囊括了没有私人所有权的群体生活、食品协作购买、技能分享以及盈利性质更明显的模式，比如二手租赁网站SnapGoods、致力于分享办公空间的Loosecubes公司和General Assembly。“为分享而分享”观念与“为乐趣和利益而分享”这两种观念之间存在着有趣的对立关系，使我很想知道，所有这些观念都是统一的吗？或者说，它们其实代表了两种不同的思想学派：一种以参加群体项目为基础，另一种则更像是消除了所有权问题的租赁服务，附带的好处则是它有可能减少浪费并提高群体参与度？

    Collaborative consumption is a concept that can seemingly describe anything from Netflix to New York City's Park Slope Food Co-op. It has been called a "revolution" by "creative entrepreneurs who want to change the world" and while its promoters claim it is a cure for "hyperconsumption" based on sharing and peer-to-peer networks, some of the ideas it is beginning to spawn and the claims made on its behalf look more like a reduced-guilt version of the same old capitalism than a revolutionary economic model. Sharing is caring? Or sharing is monetizing? What exactly is "collaborative consumption"?

    The first time I heard about collaborative consumption was through a TEDtalk from 2010 by Rachel Botsman, who coined the term to describe a reorganization of mass consumption that could potentially be less wasteful, more communal, more affordable, and seemingly more sensible. In Botsman's talk, examples such as Zipcar, Netflix (NFLX), and Swaptree were used to demonstrate how a new approach to consumption -- one where network services enable items like cars or DVDs to be jointly used or redistributed amongst members -- could make the culture of ownership a thing of the past. "Why buy a drill when what you need is the hole?" Botsman asks, claiming that the average drill gets used 12 to 13 minutes in its lifetime. She suggested that renting a drill from a neighbor, or even renting out your own drill, could begin to solve the issues brought on by our current mode of "hyperconsumption" and mitigate the wasted money and material when individuals commit to owning things they really only need to use once or twice. I thought it sounded pretty reasonable, but as I continued to explore this new economic proposition, I began to have doubts.

    The second time I heard about Collaborative Consumption was at the SHARENYConference last fall. An event put on by Parsons and ShareableMagazine, it was a veritable feast of collaborative concepts, featuring speakers whose expertise ranged from communal living without private ownership, cooperative food buying and skill sharing to more profit-oriented approaches such as SnapGoods, Loosecubes and General Assembly. There was an interesting tension between the "sharing-for-sharing's-sake" concepts and the "sharing-for-fun-and-profit" ones, which made me wonder, are all these concepts along the same continuum? Or do they represent two different schools of thought -- one based on participation in a communal project and the other more of a rental service that eliminates the hassle of ownership and as a side benefit, potentially reduces waste and promotes community participation?