Giving that ask for no returns

What confused me most when the topic, “Gift Economy”, was thrown onto me is do I look at it in a “layman” term, or do I look at it in-depth? Well, after reading ample amount of sources, I finally understood.

There are actually two types of economy, a commodity economy and a gift economy. In a commodity (or exchange) economy, status is accorded to those who have the most. In a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others. (Pinchot, 1995)

A gift economy simply means, giving and receiving. Gift exchanges should not involve explicit bargaining or demands that the gift be reciprocated, but a relationship in which there is only giving and no receiving is unlikely to last. The contrast to a gift exchange is a commodity transaction, in which no obligation exists after the exchange is consummated – the bottle of water purchased at a convenience store does not create an obligation to buy something there again. A gift is also tied in an inalienable way to the giver. This is to say that gifts are unique: it is not simply a sweater, but rather the sweater-that-Bill-gave-me. (Kollock, 1999) The Gift Economy offers us a means to learn, to understand, to take charge, and to change our world. It is a natural economy, steeped in millions of years of pre-civilization human culture and the culture of all life on Earth. If enough of us embraced it, the modern 'market' economy, built on the faulty and inhuman foundations of inequality, scarcity, false quantification of value, and acquisition, could not survive. (Pollard, 2005)

When dealing with a gift economy, price is not the main concern. That means, when I give you something, I do not expect any financial return from you, also I do not expect any direct return from you. Indeed, gifts of information and advices are not just subjected to an individual, rather, to a group as a whole. Gifts of information might be offered to a group that has a clearly defined membership (a private discussion list, for example) or to groups that are more loosely defined. (Kollock, 1999) In contrast to a gift economy, the commodity economies are benefits that come from making improvements in the technology of production. Price is often the main driving factor in this case. To sum it off, It is important to note that gift exchange and commodity transactions are ideal types, and any economy will be a mix of these two types of exchange as well as many intermediate cases between them.

In this modern era, the World Wide Web is taking part in most of our lives- thus we must be aware of this wonderful online gift and make full use of it. Today, information and advices can be found in many different websites. They act as a gift to all of us and indirectly fulfill our needs and enriched us in many ways. Information may lose value over time, but it certainly has the capacity to satisfy more than one. In many cases, information gains rather than loses value through sharing. While the exchange economy may have been appropriate for the industrial age, the gift economy is coming back as we enter the information age. (Pinchot, 1995)

“Google” is the world’s leading start and search engine. To me, information is best received through “googling”. If I need information about shopping, sports and entertainment, instead of going to websites and try to find the most suitable website to browse through, I will just go online and fire up my Google and start searching. This Google Company was founded in 1998 and became the largest search engine on the Internet in 2000. This site is a relatively new phenomenon to many. The secret to Google’s speed and accuracy are the algorithms it uses when it searches. It uses many factors to determine which are the most relevant pages that match our search, including how popular the page is, where the search term is found within the page. Furthermore, Google does not stop at only considering the page’s popularity; it also looks at the quality of pages that link to that page. Google started out as a search engine, but it has become much more than that today! It is practically its own universe. It has its own sites that tells and help you buy things online (Froogle), a mapping site (Google Maps), an email service (Gmail)- bet most of you didn’t know that! New services are introduced practically every month. Adding on, there are also different languages/versions of Google that suits people from different country- example, you are a Chinese that only speaks and read in Chinese. Fear not, Google has it all! They provide a Chinese Google website to suit you. This is simply amazing! (Google, 2007)

In conclusion, the changing economies of online interaction have shifted the costs of providing public goods – sometimes radically – and thus changed the kinds of groups, communities, and institutions that are viable in this new social landscape. (Kollock, 1999)Therefore, like what Gifford Pinchot said, “Not all economies are based on maximizing personal gain, some are founded on giving.”


Kollock, Peter (1999). 'The Economies of Online Cooperation; Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace" Retrieved February 9, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm
Pinchot, Gifford (1995). "The Gift Economy" Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm
Pollard, Dave (2005). "The Gift Economy" Retrieved February 6, 2007 from http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/04/17.html
Google. (2007, February 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 21:40, January 26, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
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