Have you heard of the Kula Ring? A brief explanation is that it represents a practice of cultural sharing along a ring of participants. The item/s that are passed along this tribal ring hold great cultural significance. What I found so fascinating about this was how prestige is signified by increasing the value of the gift before passing it along the ring. The items could be seasonal products and necklaces / armshells (valued similarly to money) and these would often accumulate when progressed through the ring. 

Another interesting facet is the idea of ownership. People only temporarily have possession of kula items but ownership is attributed to the originator of the item. This creates a sense of responsibility for each item as there’s a sense that they could be one day returned. In terms of perishables the value is kept in-tact via continual exchange in the ring

Anyway, I had a thought about how this could work online. I was prompted when watching @rachelbotsman who writes / talks a lot about collaborative consumption (Tedx Sydney talk: ). She talks about the rise of an economy that doesn’t include money, triggered in part by online applications and communities. 

The ‘what if’ questions here might be: 

A) How could a cyclic exchange occur online?

B) What item/s would be exchanged?

Some answers might be:

A) Small rings could start on social networks that have a nature of open sharing (Twitter’s probably the best candidate). These rings would pass an item along and have new participants enter the ring with every revolution completed. 

B) The most obvious item would need to be virtual. Perhaps a very draft idea (such as this one) that gets share along a ring (of likeminded people) and grows ‘legs’ as it passes through. Legs meaning ways of making it more achievable.

Basically it’s an idea for creating groups of collaboration that goes beyond a straight one on one / or one to many exchange.

The Gift (Marcel Mauss): 

Collaborative consumption (Rachel Botsman) http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com

Conscious enterprise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscious_enterprise