Gillian
Crampton Smith, the former Director of the Interaction
Design Institute Ivrea in Italy, has said “digital artifacts are
becoming the architecture of the future, shaping the life we live in
practical, social and aesthetic terms. We need to start to think about
designing them in terms of architecture as well as building, culture as
well as engineering.”

One online community that shows how digital media is shaping our lives
in both practical as well as social and cultural terms is Craigslist. The service
that bears the first name of its founder, Craig Newmark, may not have
come so far in terms of its visual look from its humble beginnings as an
email distribution list in 1995. But in terms of its influence and
reach, Craigslist has grown to a remarkable size, serving over twenty
billion page views each month.

With over eighty million new classified ads going up every month,
Craigslist has become the host of both good and bad: from apartments,
goods and services to finding a date or someone to stalk, to allegations of
enabling child prostitution and – ironically, given Craigslist’s own
past as a small, local community – crushing smaller, local businesses.

Such a great variety of things can be found on Craigslist that Jason
Paul, a young journalist, finding himself unemployed after graduating
from college, has decided to live his life off Craigslist for nine
months. What does that mean? Here are the basic rules Jason has written
for himself:

“- I will start with $2,500 that I’ve saved during college
- I will have a car, a phone, a computer and cameras to document the
trip
- I am not allowed to live out of my car
- I am not allowed to live with someone I know for longer than a
week at the beginning of each city
- I am allowed one large bag containing clothes and a few staple
foods
- I am not allowed to initiate contact with someone unless it is
through an online interaction”

So, simply put, Jason aims to find all his jobs, housing, friends, food
and other necessities entirely via Craigslist. It’s an idea that reminds
me a bit of Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days“,
but times nine, and pulling in the digital aspect. Jason is documenting
his experiences on his website, LivingCraigslist.com, and of
course, you can follow him on Twitter or become
his fan on Facebook.

Would you try the same thing (or have you already)? What sort of things
have you looked for, and found, on Craigslist? How do you think this is
changing us as people – or is it really?

Karri Ojanen