Recently, I finished reading this wonderful book by Albert Cañigueral, titled Living Better with Less: Discover the Advantages of the New Collaborative Economy. As often happens to me, I can’t help relating much of what I read to my work as a software developer and project manager.
In a few words, I’m excited by all the information Albert shares in his book and by the enormous opportunities already opening up in this new economic paradigm that’s gradually and subtly making its way forward.
The sharing economy, briefly defined, involves having a different relationship with the objects we consume and use: instead of relating to them through ownership, we treat them as services to be shared or exchanged. Hence the term collaborative consumption.
The parallels between this idea and SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS (software / platform / infrastructure as a service) are clear. In fact, one of the products sold by the company I work for is offered as a service through recurring subscriptions, and the most surprising thing is that all our clients use this model. They don’t buy the product; they pay periodically to use it.
When people talk about the sharing economy, BlaBlaCar or Airbnb come to mind (both very popular platforms in my country). But those are just the tip of the iceberg. The most interesting thing is that this is a revival of old, perhaps even ancestral, ways of organizing ourselves—only now the Internet acts as a lever, making their impact infinitely greater. When we talk about the Internet, we’re talking about software…
Thanks to countless initiatives being launched through websites and mobile apps, we’re seeing all the possibilities for organizing an economy that focuses less on hyper-consumption and more on collaboration and trust between individuals.
Anyone who thinks roads full of cars with only one person in each are a sustainable future for us and our children is on the wrong track. A shift from one economic paradigm to another doesn’t happen in two days, nor does it happen visibly. The two overlap until, one or two decades later, we realize we’re doing things differently.
The economy doesn’t change just because; it changes because people’s mindsets have changed first.
As I said, all this is being made possible by countless websites serving as a basic form of communication. How else could it happen? The work of many developers, then, isn’t just about writing software; it also carries responsibility, because through what we build we change how people relate to one another and how the economy can evolve. It may sound grandiose, but it’s true.
I sometimes say this is a wonderful time—perhaps the best time—to be a professional developer, because part of the economy is moving into the digital realm. But Albert points out in his book that it doesn’t stop there: technology is also changing how we travel, interact, and consume, and is ultimately changing the traditional economy. The transformation goes both ways. Fascinating.
As Albert says, all this is happening because of the Internet, its widespread use, digital culture, the omnipresence of technology, and also the economic crisis (which encourages people to seek alternatives that don’t depend directly on spending money).
The sharing economy is about much more than splitting the cost of a car on your regular commute. It also includes:
- Couchsurfing: finding accommodation based on trust between individuals and your reputation online.
- Car sharing and carpooling: not only sharing rides as a driver or passenger, but also making your own car available for others to use when you don’t need it.
- Peer-to-peer accommodation and space rental: hosting others in your home and finding accommodation yourself, free or paid, always between individuals and based on trust. This also includes swapping your home with someone else’s.
- Coworking: why not share office space among different companies or freelancers, reducing costs and enabling networking between them?
- Participatory finance, such as crowdfunding (supporting projects) and crowdlending (peer-to-peer loans), especially important in countries where the economic crisis has greatly restricted access to credit… This also includes collective savings initiatives.
- Peer-to-peer currency exchange, cutting out the bank intermediary and its fees.
- Virtual social currencies, with Bitcoin the best-known example, though there are others.
- Time banks: you don’t have to buy someone’s service; you can exchange what everyone has—time! You help a neighbor with something one day, and they help you another time, for example.
- Second-hand markets: at least for me, I feel guilty throwing something away when someone else could use it and I simply don’t need it. The reverse applies too: why not buy something you need that doesn’t have to be new? That reduces constant manufacturing and lets us reuse products more before throwing them away.
- Consumer groups, collective purchasing, direct sales between producers and consumers, and a great deal more.
Examples? There are hundreds, many of them local. A few I’ve taken a particular interest in are Comunitae and Lendico (for collaborative lending), Home for Exchange (for home swaps), BlaBlaCar and Carpooling (for ride sharing), Social Car (for peer-to-peer car rental), Goteo, Verkami, Kickstarter, and Indiegogo (for project funding), Puddle and TuTanda (for collective savings), Transferwise (for peer-to-peer currency exchange), and many more.
Could anyone think all these platforms are just proof-of-concept projects? Not at all. They’re the visible face of a new paradigm for consuming and sharing in a different way.
I believe this movement, if that’s what we should call it, is irreversible, and we’re only now taking the first steps. It has its ups and downs, but one thing is clear: an economy based on unlimited GDP growth in a world with finite resources, where extreme individualism fills pharmacies with anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication, isn’t sustainable. This emerging economic paradigm isn’t based solely on money and the accumulation of possessions, but on sharing and using those possessions. It brings us a little closer to the idea of leaving the world a little better than we found it. That’s not idealism; it’s a reality that’s gradually changing how we relate to one another and now how we consume. Yes, I’m firmly convinced that software (and our work) can serve causes like these, giving our day-to-day lives greater meaning.
So what does this have to do with me if, as a developer, I just do what I’m told? Anyone might think that. But these kinds of websites and initiatives, which aim to change how we interact and exchange goods and services, require knowledge of certain technologies to build and also introduce a social component into products. For example:
- Thousands of users, with large volumes of information and assets to manage, call for cloud computing: deploying systems in the cloud and using massive databases.
- Big data: when many users behave in different ways on a platform, we need mechanisms to collect large volumes of information that help us make decisions and understand how users actually use the system.
- Usability: a collaborative platform available to everyone needs strong usability, and that needs to be part of its DNA.
- Multi-device support: tools should be available on as many platforms as possible, through responsive websites or native mobile apps.
- If a platform is social, it depends on attracting users, so it’s more important than ever to implement SEO and SEM strategies.
It’s not that every developer has to be an expert in every one of these areas, but we certainly need to know something about them.
Living Better with Less is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it. It’s another example of how our professional careers as developers or software project managers are enriched by all the movements that emerge with technology at their core.
Ideas are one of those things that aren’t used up when shared; they multiply. — Albert Cañigueral
Read the first chapter of the book here.
By the way, this new wave was already predicted or anticipated back in 1999 in a book by the Spanish philosopher and mathematician Javier Echevarría, titled The Lords of the Air: Telépolis and the Third Environment. I remember that book, which I devoured so long ago, and now I can see echoes of it appearing in reality.