Publication

Shareable.net and Shareable Magazine

Web platform and magazine about the culture and economy of sharing

Door: Michiel Schwarz, initiator "Sustainism" Michiel Schwarz
shareable

Shareable is a non-profit online magazine that focuses on sharing and sharing by design. The website explores “how to design life, work and community, so that people can better share resources”. It is a hub for information and exchange to accommodate “people and projects bringing a shareable world to life”.


Shareable.net is an inspiring resource for all kinds of sharing-based initiatives—sharing of products, services, information, and places. The website maps new social developments based on sharing and tracks what is happening in the emerging “sharing economy” and in the domain of so-called “collaborative consumption”. It tracks projects in the sharing economy as well as social initiatives in a variety of domains. News items and sharing initiatives are grouped under six headers: Life & Art, Work & Enterprise, Cities, CivicSystem, Science & Tech, and EcoSystem. It invites people to share news about sharing, so that all of us can “learn about how [we] can lead a more shareable life”.

If you would like to see what the emerging culture and economy of sharing looks like, shareable.net is a good place to start. The many developments, initiatives, projects and contributions on shareable.net show that the sharing society is growing rapidly. Many of the examples recounted here confirm the viability of sharing-based business models and social entrepreneurship.

What excites me most is that shareable.net shows how sharing has become a real issue at the centre of new developments and how an active community around sharing has emerged, and continues to grow.

In the sustainist era, sharing is linked to other sustainist concerns such as connectivity and ecological living. The shift towards sharing, that can be gauged from the initiatives depicted in Shareable Magazine, exemplifies a shift towards sustainist lifestyles and practices. As Kim Gaskins, one of the contributors to shareable.net, observes: “Sharing represents a fundamental paradigm shift in how people consume: from hyper-consumption to ‘collaborative consumption’ – a perfect storm driven by connective technologies, economic recession, and raised environmental consciousness”.

shareable.net adequately exposes how one of the core qualities of sustainism — sharing in all its forms and contexts — is being designed and developed right across different domains of society and economic sectors. The process of sharing combines a number of “sustainist” features, such as collaboration, connectedness, responsible consumption, “commons”, open exchange of information, and sustainability concerns. In many cases, the examples of sharing lead to reduced energy and resource use and reflect a mentality of “do more with less”.

Sources / relevant weblinks:

shareable.net
shareable.net/blog
meshing.it
collaborativeconsumption

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