????協作消費（collaborative consumption）這個概念似乎可以用來描述了從在線影片租賃商Netflix到紐約公園坡糧食合作社（Park Slope Food Co-op）的一切。它被“富有創造力、想要改變世界的企業家們”稱為一場“革命”。擁護者們聲稱，它以分享和對等網絡為基礎，是“亢奮消費”的良藥。但是，它所催生的一些理念以及打著它的旗號出現的一些主張看起來更像是傳統資本主義減少了負罪感的版本，而并不是什么具有革命性的經濟模式。分享就意味著關愛？或者說，分享就是貨幣化？究竟什么是“協作消費”？

????我第一次聽到“協作消費”這個詞是雷切爾?波特曼在2010年TED大會上的講話。她創造這個詞語來描述一種新的大眾消費模式。這種模式有可能不那么浪費，更加大眾化，更加廉價，似乎也更加理性。在波特曼的講話中，網上租車公司Zipcar、Netflix和物品交換網站Swaptree等例子被用來說明一種新的消費模式：網絡服務使得汽車或DVD等物品能夠在各成員間共同使用或重新分配，從而使所有權文化變成過去。“你需要的只是眼，為什么要跑去買鉆子呢？”波特曼問道。他說，普通鉆子在其生命期內總計只會被使用12到13分鐘。她指出，向鄰居借鉆子，甚或把自己的鉆子租出去可以解決我們目前的“亢奮消費”模式所帶來的問題，同時減少金錢和材料的浪費，因為人們一心想要擁有的東西實際上他們只會用一兩次而已。起初我認為這聽起來相當合理，但當我繼續探究這種新的經濟觀點時，我開始產生了懷疑。

????我第二次聽到“協作消費”這個詞語是在去年秋天舉行的SHARENY大會上。這個大會由帕森斯設計學院（Parsons）和《分享雜志》（ShareableMagazine）舉辦，是協作觀念的真正盛會。會議演講嘉賓的專業領域囊括了沒有私人所有權的群體生活、食品協作購買、技能分享以及盈利性質更明顯的模式，比如二手租賃網站SnapGoods、致力于分享辦公空間的Loosecubes公司和General Assembly。“為分享而分享”觀念與“為樂趣和利益而分享”這兩種觀念之間存在著有趣的對立關系，使我很想知道，所有這些觀念都是統一的嗎？或者說，它們其實代表了兩種不同的思想學派：一種以參加群體項目為基礎，另一種則更像是消除了所有權問題的租賃服務，附帶的好處則是它有可能減少浪費并提高群體參與度？

????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?