David Rowan writes that when a well designed online networks and ubiquitous internet connections bring people together to trade, share, collaborate and swap expertise with incredibly generous goodwill.

Now that collaborative spirit is spreading to all sorts of other industries as ubiquitous internet connections bring us together in creative new ways. The peer-to-peer model has lately moved from auction houses and online classifieds to car-sharing, jewellery lending, even online banking -- and each time it's cutting out a traditional incumbent. In an era when environmental concerns are making conspicuous consumption harder to justify, start-ups are targeting customers keener to pay for access to goods and services rather than actual physical ownership - and new web-based networks are letting all of us be both lenders and borrowers.

... this is nothing less than a social revolution. "We are relearning how to create value out of shared and open resources in ways that balance personal self-interest with the good of the larger community," she says. "For the first time in history, the age of networks and mobile devices has created the efficiency and social glue to create innovative solutions, enabling the sharing and exchange of assets from cars, to bikes, to skills to spare space." And, naturally, Botsman is encouraging buyers of her book to swap, barter or pass it on so it finds new readers.

Perhaps the exception is that of any community that incites debate, like most American political blogs, where dogma is far more prevalent than goodwill.

Rentalship is the new ownership in the networked age