Better than Cyber Utopia: How the Internet Helped Us Create the Sharing Economy

http://www.nationofchange.org/better-cyber-utopia-how-internet-helped-us-create-sharing-economy-1370353964

Seventeen years later, freedoms online and off have deteriorated. During the time the Internet went mainstream, wealth disparities widened to historic proportions. Yes, individuals were empowered, but big corporations were empowered a lot more. While citizens watched cat videos on Youtube, corporations leveraged globalized financial markets and network technologies to amass unprecedented wealth while impoverishing the rest of us.

But then, around 2009, something began to change. Primed by financial need and the social media boom, people started to share more than just cat videos and haughty manifestos. A wave of new online services emerged that used the grammar of social media to help people share some of the essential resources of modern life: cars, skills, rides, experiences, housing, money, work, workspace, clothes, books, and more.

At the same time, the rapid adoption of smartphones turned sharing into a real-time, on-the-go, place-based experience. The Internet, instead of becoming a separate utopia, was unlocking the potential of individuals and idle physical assets in offline communities.

Network technologies, shared access business models, and dirt cheap production gear are giving individuals the same productive power and market access that only big corporations could command just a few years ago. In the midst of crisis, individuals are crafting a new lifestyle based on sharing that enables them not merely to survive, but to thrive.

Here are the stories of three individuals pioneering this new way of life.