What’s Mine is Yours
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What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live, by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, Collins, RRP£12.99, 280 pages
In the face of gloomy tirades against consumer society, What’s Mine is Yours documents a positive shift by identifying thousands of examples of swapping, sharing and trading.
Collaboration is nothing new, argue Botsman and Rogers, but the internet has redefined the networks that can redistribute products, or connect people who need the same thing. Examples include LandShare, established in 2009 to connect those who have land with those who need it for cultivating food, and CouchSurfing, a network of 1.7m sofas across 135 countries available for people to sleep on. Bicycles or cars can now be consumed as services (London’s bike share scheme or Zipcar) and online markets – Swap.com, Ebay, Freecycle, Gumtree – signify a shift towards collaborative consumption.
This is a remarkably hopeful and accessible book about a social revolution gaining momentum.
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