Week 4: In sharing we trust

In week 4 I turned to the notion of 'sharing is caring' and ask you, in all of your honesty, if the feelings of a complete stranger - no one you know by face - has any inkling of an effect on yourself? I understand, outlines in the Swedish journal article Gifting Technologies (McGee & Scogeby, 2004) and by the different categories of gift-giving justifications, or more specifically in this case, 'file-sharing'. In many cases applied irrespective of reciprocity. The notions of sharing tiny bytes of data and sending them flying through the abyss and landing into storage of another caring sharer's hard drive has a certain sentimental value, even if what you're sharing and caring for has no effect on the good of humanity and is possibly purely for entertainment sake. Irrespective of my opinion, as an outsider who is contact with people in such situations, I do have an understanding of the community created through file sharers and receivers. I even try, through my measly attempt to be part of this virtual exchange, as I scroll through my quickest option of retrieving a song to play immediately on my itunes. This is the sad and limited connection I have being a receiver. Wherever I must have picked it up, along the way i came to realise that i fall into the category defined in Gifting Technologies as Fear-Based Gifting: I am the happy and greedy receiver who has absolutely no intention to allow my 'share' files folder to be active.  Why? Because the instant my father taught me the basics of file sharer application Kazaa, he never failed in pointing out  that i 'should not share any thing with any one or the computer WILL get a virus and it WILL die'. Ok, so a tad on the melodramatic side, however, after years and years of happily retrieving off Limewire, it saddens me that i still do not allow my fellow sharers to retrieve off me.  

Also, in this day and age of the post-broadcast rush, we are in contact, either direct or through our friends very close uncles brother, with some aspect of illegal downloading activities, people that wholesale the bulks of what they illegally produce, and here I am, naive and obliviously afraid of the small megabytes i manage to retrieve in a month. This is what strikes me as most amusing as I visit a family member monthly to update my hard drive on the latest and greatest he as on access. Guilty? I think not, I'm hardly a facilitator, hardly a conspirer, I am merely the innocent bystander; completely unaware.