Initial Brainstorming about "Sharing"
As a group of three we started off with simple understanding of what sharing is to us ? It turned out to be anomalous to to our traditional notion of sharing. We started out with thinking of sharing as a "sweet gesture" of willingly giving what belongs to us to others. Is it that simple ? When we tried to unwind this question we came across different angles and means of what sharing could be.
After going through a short literature review, following points were worth noting:
1. Sharing need not be altruistic. it functions well in a symbiotic and organic environment.
2. The need for sharing is often a requirement to deal with under utilised resources.
3. Sharing helps in economies of scale- improving production and reducing cost and wastage.
We also felt that one of the reasons that we have started talking lot about sharing is due to the changes in social structure. We as a community are much more divided compared to what people were a century ago based on increasing number of nuclear families and apartment culture. As such, there is a tremendous reduction in social interaction and increase furthered by individualism and self sufficiency. This implies that we have to be very conscious of community and collaborative actions that were integral and a given part of the past.
These understandings that we have developed through reading and discussion form a basis of our argument and design practice for the project.