I was reading an article over at TechCrunch about AirBed and Breakfast - a site where you can find accommodations in people’s homes around the world for a price.  I was thinking it was interesting and part of me suddenly had ‘fears’ about ‘what could go wrong’ and I figure it’s only a matter of time before there’s a CSI episode about this, or someone tries to set up a network of brothels or something like that.  But that’s just the fear talking, and as we all know, most people are actually pretty OK.

Here’s the skinny on AirBed and Breakfast:  People register their accommodations with the site, and say when that space is available, and for how many travelers, etc.  Travelers look for openings in a city they are traveling to.  If they have an airbed (not sure if it’s required, or if one of those foam pads will do, or just a sleeping bag, or what) they can stay at the place for the stated price.  Some of the prices are low - 25 dollars for a place in Portland, for example.  Others are a bit steep - 3,000 dollars for a whole house in San Francisco.  If you read through the comments on the TechCrunch post, you’ll get a great range of both fearful reactions and defense of the program.

Now, apparently AirBed isn’t the first of this kind - Couchsurfing.com has been around for a while, and it’s free - couchsurfing.com seems more about meeting new people, making friends, and things like that.  Looking through their site, there are a lot of people worldwide who take part in the community, the experiences are almost all positive ones, and users seem very happy with the way it works.  You look for people in a place you’re going, and find out what kind of accommodations they have available - how many people can stay with them, for how long, what the environment is like, things like that.

Going beyond these two sites, it seems that people have been doing this on craigslist for quite some time - there are categories there for housing swaps, temporary housing, etc.  Lots of rooms for rent over the labor day weekend, for example.

Now, looking at this from a big picture perspective, is this the wave of the future - finding more ways to share our limited resources, for free or for a price? Will we see Ziphouse as the next evolution of Zipcar?  Will we start seeing boarding houses cropping up all over the place like during the Depression, with people traveling all over the place to get temporary work, then moving on when the job is done, like carnies in the summertime?

(“Like carnies in the summertime…”  I’ll have to remember that - maybe i can put it in my next play.  Or even better, that’ll be the title of my next play.  Yeah… a dystopian near-future epic about the collapse of some global system or other.)