协作消费（collaborative consumption）这个概念似乎可以用来描述了从在线影片租赁商Netflix到纽约公园坡粮食合作社（Park Slope Food Co-op）的一切。它被“富有创造力、想要改变世界的企业家们”称为一场“革命”。拥护者们声称，它以分享和对等网络为基础，是“亢奋消费”的良药。但是，它所催生的一些理念以及打着它的旗号出现的一些主张看起来更像是传统资本主义减少了负罪感的版本，而并不是什么具有革命性的经济模式。分享就意味着关爱？或者说，分享就是货币化？究竟什么是“协作消费”？

    我第一次听到“协作消费”这个词是雷切尔•波特曼在2010年TED大会上的讲话。她创造这个词语来描述一种新的大众消费模式。这种模式有可能不那么浪费，更加大众化，更加廉价，似乎也更加理性。在波特曼的讲话中，网上租车公司Zipcar、Netflix和物品交换网站Swaptree等例子被用来说明一种新的消费模式：网络服务使得汽车或DVD等物品能够在各成员间共同使用或重新分配，从而使所有权文化变成过去。“你需要的只是眼，为什么要跑去买钻子呢？”波特曼问道。他说，普通钻子在其生命期内总计只会被使用12到13分钟。她指出，向邻居借钻子，甚或把自己的钻子租出去可以解决我们目前的“亢奋消费”模式所带来的问题，同时减少金钱和材料的浪费，因为人们一心想要拥有的东西实际上他们只会用一两次而已。起初我认为这听起来相当合理，但当我继续探究这种新的经济观点时，我开始产生了怀疑。

    我第二次听到“协作消费”这个词语是在去年秋天举行的SHARENY大会上。这个大会由帕森斯设计学院（Parsons）和《分享杂志》（ShareableMagazine）举办，是协作观念的真正盛会。会议演讲嘉宾的专业领域囊括了没有私人所有权的群体生活、食品协作购买、技能分享以及盈利性质更明显的模式，比如二手租赁网站SnapGoods、致力于分享办公空间的Loosecubes公司和General Assembly。“为分享而分享”观念与“为乐趣和利益而分享”这两种观念之间存在着有趣的对立关系，使我很想知道，所有这些观念都是统一的吗？或者说，它们其实代表了两种不同的思想学派：一种以参加群体项目为基础，另一种则更像是消除了所有权问题的租赁服务，附带的好处则是它有可能减少浪费并提高群体参与度？

    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?

    今年2月，我参加了CommonPitch活动，结果我的疑心更重了。这次活动邀请了面向协作消费的初创公司的创业者，让他们向著名专家组成的小组阐述自己的想法。除了时间限制太短，无法真正解释清楚他们的理念（更不用说他们关于减少浪费和公共建设的具体想法）之外，在他们的阐述中还存在着一个明显的倾向。有些创业者不是在寻找重新思考消费方式以减少浪费的方法，而是在寻找以前在“真正的”浪费领域，有哪些赚钱的机会，但却错过了。只有当初创公司找到了创造或参与已有对等关系的正确方法时，他们才有可能赚到这些利润。

    Common Pitch活动中有两个这样的例子特别突出：有个初创公司的想法是“在聚会上募集资金是件非常尴尬的事情，为什么不让我们来处理这件事呢？”，而另一个公司的想法是“如果你可以把自己的自行车租出去挣钱，为什么还要让它闲置呢？”。把创造类的担忧（聚会和骑车）和经济类的方法（将之货币化！）结合起来，这真是奇怪！我在想，这真是雷切尔•波特曼在向全世界介绍协作消费这个概念时所赞扬的那种东西吗？我回过头，重新查看了TED大会上的讲话。

    第二次查看时，几个矛盾出现了，最明显之处在于这场运动的口号以及“协作”（共同创造）和“消费”（摄取或破坏）对立面的结合。而且，通过Swaptree网站用《欲望都市》（Sex in the City）DVD交换《24小时》（24）DVD的人被波特曼称为使用“令陌生人彼此信任”技术的“高能力协作者”。但这种说法很奇怪。信任不必依靠第三方的保障，比如有种系统，要是已经注册该系统的交换方行为不端，那么这个系统就会确保他得到差评。难道不是这样吗？

    最令人不解的是这种观点：分享是人的天性，因为“我们是猿进化而来，天生就是为了分享”，但“技术使得分享没有了摩擦并变得有趣”，因为协作消费最终不是“在沙箱里做好人”。那么，分享到底是人类天生的倾向，还是我们天生拒绝分享，因此需要“快感”系统的帮助，我们才会做出正确的事？技术“带来了信任”，正如人们深情地所说的那样，还是说，它只是在强加责任？

    总体上说，我喜欢这些服务（Netflix极其方便，Airbnb提供了新的旅行方式，Skillshare以非传统的方式把老师和学生联系到了一起），但我怀疑，协作消费并没有从根本上改变我们的消费方式，而只是改变了我们作为消费者看待自己的方式。正如许多人已经指出的那样，我们的消费习惯早就已经塑造了我们的特性，这种特性的展现可能比消费本身的最初行为越来越重要。如今，很多人的个人购买力都在减退，协作消费这种方式是否只是跟以前的有机/可持续消费等“好”模式一样，不仅根据我们购物的内容，还根据我们的购物方式来定义我们自己？如果“购买”变得更像是“分享”，我们是否就能感觉好点？另外，考虑到工作岗位短缺，难以满足文科学位持有者的期望，出租多余物品的情况是否会变成现实，甚至“创造性”地解决不充分就业问题？

    交易、方便、效率、减少浪费，似乎协作消费为实现这些美好的东西带来了新的可能性。然而，创造力、团结、分享和信任彼此来自于人性，而并不是主要来自于系统或者消费方式（这是《分享杂志》提出的观点）。因为邻居使用了你的钻子而收点钱（尽管这确实很尴尬），通过使用Zipcar的服务来降低交通费用，或者通过邮递交换DVD，这些都没有什么错，但我们不要因此就假装自己是在拯救世界，是在做个更好的人，或者真的是在（因为关怀）而分享。

    译者：千牛絮

    My skepticism grew sharper in February when I attended CommonPitch, an event which invited entrepreneurs with collaborative consumption-oriented start-ups to pitch their ideas to a celebrity panel of experts. Besides the fact that the time limits were too short for any real examination of the concepts (much less their implications for waste reduction and community building), there was a noticeable trend among the pitches. Rather than identifying ways to reconsider consumption to reduce waste, some entrepreneurs seemed to be identifying areas where the real waste was a missed opportunity for profit -- profit that a start-up might claim if only they could find the right way to create or insert themselves into an existing peer-to-peer relationship.

    Two such examples at Common Pitch stood out: a start-up based on the notion that "collecting money at a party is so awkward, why not let us handle the transaction?" and another along the lines of "why let your bike just sit there when you could rent it out for money?" It was an odd combination of creative class concerns (parties and bike rides) with a financial class approach (monetize it!). I wondered, is this really what Rachel Botsman was celebrating when she introduced collaborative consumption to the world? I went back and re-watched the TED talk.

    Upon second viewing, several contradictions stood out, the most obvious being the title of the movement and its union of opposites in "collaborate" (joint effort of creation) and "consume" (to ingest or destroy). Also, Botsman's description of people who trade DVDs of "Sex in the City" for "24" through Swaptree as "highly enabled collaborators" using technology that "enables trust between strangers," struck a strange note. Isn't the definition of trust not needing to rely on a third party's insurance, such as a system that ensures your fellow registered swapper will be subject to poor ratings should she misbehave?

    Most confusing were the assertions that sharing is natural because "we're monkeys, born and bred to share," but that "technology makes sharing frictionless and fun," because ultimately, collaborative consumption is not about playing "nicely in the sandbox." So, is sharing an innate human tendency, or do we inherently reject it and need "fun" systems to help us do what's right? Is technology "enabling trust," as it is so lovingly put, or really just enforcing accountability?

    While I'm a fan of these services in a general sense (Netflix is incredibly convenient, Airbnb offers new ways to travel, Skillshare brings teachers and students together in non-traditional ways), I wonder if collaborative consumption isn't fundamentally changing how we consume, just how we might see ourselves as consumers. As many have noted, our identities have long been shapedbyourconsumptionhabits, and increasingly, the display of that identity is possibly more important the original act of consumption itself. At a time when personal purchasing power is on the decline for many of us, is collaborative consumption, like the "good" form of organic/sustainable consumption before it, a way to define ourselves not only by what we buy but how we buy? If that "buy" becomes more like "share" do we feel better about it? Additionally, given the deficit of jobs to match the expectations of a vast class of liberal arts degree holders, does the prospect of renting out our extra stuff become a realistic, even "creative" solution to underemployment?

    Deals, convenience, efficiency, waste-reduction - there seem to be new possibilities for these wonderful things with collaborative consumption. Creativity, togetherness, sharing, and trust in each other, however, come from us -- human beings -- not primarily from systems or styles of consumption (apointmadeonShareable). There's nothing wrong with making a buck off your neighbor for use of your drill (however awkward that might actually be), or lowering your transportation costs by signing up for Zipcar, or trading DVDs through the mail; let's just not pretend we're saving the world, being better people, or truly sharing (in the caring sense) as a result.