After my previous post about CouchSurfing.com, I went to look and see if there was a solution for passengers and parcels, and I happened to find www.pickuppal.com, a site that matches drivers with passengers or parcels. Its a brilliant way to car pool or to have a package delivered. Okay, so my idea has been taken, but I’m actually glad for that. Now the next step is to find a way to share goods within a community. For instance, if I have a drill, a lawnmower, and a bicycle that I don’t use it often, I can take photos and upload them to a good sharing site. This particular site might be good to have an optional paid membership, which really is more like insurance against thefts or breakage. The site will pay for theft or breakage, if any of the responsible members disappear. This would reduce the amount of goods and items people need to buy. Why does every house on a street block need a new lawnmower from Wal-Mart? A few would be good enough, and the whole community could share. They could pay the service and maintenance fees, plus a little which would add up to help replace the machine if it gets completely worn out. People could browse the database for items and goods nearby, before going to buy a brand new expensive item that they seldom use. Watch, I’ll find something like this in the next few days.
Browsing Posts published in June, 2008
There are a number of places on the net that are attracting people of the giver culture in droves, but few quite as concentrated as www.couchsurfing.com, a site that is about sharing a room for people for free for a period of time. Since I’m likely to be moving to Toronto in the next month or so, to work for one of two jobs, my sister passed this on to me through the word of a veteran couch surfer she’s currently working with.So I logged in, and to my surprise there were over 300 people willing to share a space in their room to a perfect stranger. Amazing! Now if there was a network for people to log in to get free travel, maybe car surfing perhaps, we’d be advancing the giver culture even further.
Perhaps a delivery service that allowed small businesses to get deliveries through people already traveling from the origin to the destination? Provide them with some extra gas coupons perhaps?
Just the other day I was looking for a job in game design. Having recently returned home from Canada, I’ve been applying to quite a few game companies (to a fairly good response, I might add). Although I think I have probably landed a couple of the jobs I’ve recently applied for, I decided to check craigslist, just to see what else was out there.To my great fortune, I stumbled upon an ad, put up through an agency, for a Lead Design position for a company called Earth Rangers. The ad suggested that this game was aimed at kids, to promote environmentalism. Of course, I was curious and did a little research into this company. It happens to be that Earth Rangers is a non-profit organization, founded by Robert Schad. Their primary goal is to educate youth about our environment through school assemblies and hands-on activities. This matches one of my ideas for a Giver Culture themed project, that I mentioned in the article ‘Foundations of a Giver Culture’ which outlines the idea for educational software designed for children. In my article, I emphasize science and practical skills as one of the primary fields of focus, but of course, environmental science would have a very large emphasis. Now I seem to have stumbled on a group which is doing just that. Creating educational software for kids. And doing it for free, sharing knowledge and supporting creativity. Definitely Giver Culture ideals. As I see it, this is just but one example of many examples of the Giver Culture starting to emerge as a major cultural force. Let’s just hope I can actually land a job with these guys and have the opportunity to help them create fun games that teach invisibly. But even if I don’t, my goal is to eventually spearhead my own projects to create such software.
