Abstract

Economy, society and environment are three entwined pillars of sustainability. Many efforts converge already on ecological and economical aspects of sustainability and we are slowly (and hopefully) adapting to make a better use of our resources.
 
As foreseeing and knowledgeable use of physical resources is today the major priority of sustainable trends in production and distribution of physical goods, I tried to apply similar measures to the production and particularly to distribution of cultural goods in order to address social sustainability.
 
In this field of sustainability the materials that are produced and exchanged are not physical resources, but intangible information such as ideas, opinions and meanings. Therefore I tried to remodel the exchange of cultural resources through an optimized consumption of media content.
 
Among the priorities of social sustainability we can mention: promoting social interaction, fostering cultural pluralism, supporting cultural enrichment and rising education level. The underlying logic of our proposal is to spread ideas from one person to another, This transmission of memes would work on two axis, vertically opening a dialogue between popular culture and classical literature and connecting people from different cultures.
 
Conceived in this perspective, “Gem” is a social software (a web-based service), designed for media consumers, which merges benefits from participative media collections and semantic social network. The system relies on user-centered (prosumer-centered actually) connections between media excerpts.
 
 
If you wish to know more about the project, please contact me.