Thinking About Networks – Clay Shirky
2005.9.22
When presented with the need to relocate ones home and belongings to another part of the city, or even around the block you will probably find your self using a specialized transport network like UHaul or the ubiquitous (in NYC at least) Man-with-Van. Both networks rely on the cities constant state of flux, with people moving up, and down with people leaving and with new arrivals. Each network provides the user the ability to move their ‘stuff' across the city. In the context of this paper, you are moving to a new neighborhood, and you are either renting a UHaul truck, or, a man and his van.
UHaul is a large national corporation with many rental outlets, thousands of trucks and a long history of providing rental trucks for use by it's customers. UHaul's network exists alongside a few other companies that provide essentially the same service.
The Man-with-Van is a one man operation, with one ‘location', and a varied history over the many nodes on the network. Hundreds of independent man-with-vans compete with each other providing variations on the same service.
Once you have decided that you are moving you need to reserve a truck with UHaul or schedule a move with the man-with-van. Scheduling can be difficult, particularly at the end of the calendar month, when many people are in need of a truck or man-with-van for their own moves, so it is quite necessary to plan ahead. Recent rises in demand (many people moving to the new hot neighborhood), shortages of available trucks (trucks have been rented for too many outgoing one way moves, ie. taken out of town in a disproportionate amount to new trucks arriving from out of town) or shortages of mans, vans or both (Proprietors can be limited by increased costs, such as insurance or fuel and can be stressed by rapid upwardly mobile city dwellers), can create additional hardships in getting access to either network.
Once you have scheduled either your UHaul rental or agreed on a time with the man you put all your stuff in boxes and wait for moving day to come. If you have chosen the UHaul method, on moving day, you travel in some way to the UHaul location that was specified when you reserved the truck to retrieve the truck, you fill out some paperwork, present documents (more on this later) and when all is in order, a quick tour of the truck, explanation of rules and polices and then you are handed the keys to the truck you have rented. More likely than not this truck is the biggest thing you have ever driven. The truck is due back at the UHaul HQ in twenty-four hours and there is no benefit (or penalty) for returning it early. You navigate the truck back to your soon to be ‘old' apartment, make a feeble attempt at parallel parking, or if you are lucky park at the hydrant, a driveway or in a space your moving friend has saved or acquired for you. You did remember to guilt/trick your friends into helping you, right? Load up the truck, up and down stairs lots of times, take one last look, lock up and back to the truck, The rented UHaul truck now has all your stuff in it, and your friend in the seat next to you and you are going to drive it across town or down the block. You have the address, and you know what neighborhood, but if it's far you probably don't know how to get there by driving, since you usually take the subway. This travel component can be difficult; you are driving on unfamiliar roads, in an unfamiliar vehicle that is unbelievable large feeling. You printed out a map downloaded from the internet but it's accuracy is dodgy. Traffic, construction and your lack of experience all introduce inefficiency and noise into the driving adventure to your ‘new' apartment. When you do get to your ‘new' place, you try another attempt at parking the thing and its unpack the truck, up and down the stairs, and collapse for a well deserved rest after bringing the last box up. You now owe your friends beer, and depending on the number of flights of stairs, lunch or dinner. But wait, the truck needs to go back. If you found a space it can sit there, there is no hurry to get it back as long as it's back before its due, if you didn't find a space, double parking a UHaul truck is less than inconspicuous. You must now return the truck back to the location from whence it came, and get yourself back to your ‘new' place before all the beer is gone.
If you had chosen to use the man-with-van for your move, your story is considerably shorter, more direct, and more to the point. Your friends aren't necessary to help you move, and depending on the deal with the man, you may not need help either. Right now all your stuff is moving automagically down to the van, being carried by the man (or men or women). When things are all loaded up, you hop in the van with the man and your stuff and head out for your ‘new' place. The man-with-van has specialized local knowledge, knows where the construction, congestion and quickest routes are located. You are a passenger not the driver and the travel leave a pleasant opportunity for small talk with the man, possibly about your new neighborhood or his crazy stories of the man's experiences moving band's gear to gigs and their nutty antics. Once you arrive at your soon to be ‘new' home things are unloaded and brought up and that's it (we'll talk about payment in a moment), and the man takes his van as goes off into the sunset.
While both networks travel over the city streets, the man-with-van is optimized to choose the best route to your new place, as well as to avoid known bottlenecks and route around troubles on the road. Renting the UHaul requires you to provide the navigation expertise, as well as driving skill. Renting the UHaul necessitates you go get the truck from some remote location and additionally requires you to take 4 extra ‘trips' (to the rental center, to your old place, back to the rental center, to your new place). The man-with-van comes to you, with the only trip involving you, is the carriage of your stuff across the city.
Access to these networks requires that you pay for use. You pay for the hiring of the rental UHaul or the hiring of the man-with-van, both with a fee per unit of time plus extras. The UHaul rental is a fixed rate per twenty-four hour period, plus a charge per mile driven. Fuel cost is the responsibility of the renter, insurance is an extra. The man-with-van is a fixed rate per hour, sometimes with a minimum number of hours. Fuel cost is included, as is insurance.
Network availability is generally good in both cases, but at times such as the end of the month UHaul's fixed number of trucks, which are rented on a daily basis, create a dilemma that can only be solved by adding trucks even if they are only used in times of greatest demand. The man-with-van has greater flexibility in time when demand is high as many moves can be undertaken in one day as well as additional nodes can be added when demand dictates. Vans normally used for other activities can put in to double duty to generate extra income for their owners. In short UHaul is limited by its reliance on fixed assets and needs to have enough assets to satisfy very high demands that are only temporary in nature while the man-with-van network does not have any overall organization and self organizes based on demand and can ‘swarm' to accommodate large bursts of traffic.
A constant concerns of network users, security and privacy, exist in both of our ways of moving our stuff, but are handled quite differently. When renting a UHaul, personal documents are required for proof of identity, a state issued driver license and a deposit against damage on a credit card all come together to form a formal legal contract. These security measures are required to keep in compliance with the law and to reduce the company's/network's risk against loss. You can purchase additional insurance to amortize your risk in the contract as well. The man-with-van does not require any documents from you at all, it is a first name basis kind of affair, the informality of arrangement is possible as the man-with-van takes minimal risk, a risk he absorbs in his fee as ‘cost-of-doing-business'. In matters of privacy, as seen above you are giving you personal information and financial information for the right to enter the network. But once you drive off the rental center lot, you have a good amount of privacy as the owner of the network is sufficiently removed from the ‘stuff' that gets put in the truck, as well as where the ‘stuff' got picked up and where it went. The man-with-van doesn't have an abundance of your personal information and your cash payment has little traceability after the fact but the man-with-van knows where your ‘stuff' started from and where it went as well as pretty intimate knowledge of it in carrying it down and up all those stairs and in the back of his van.
While the man-with-van and UHaul share several commonalities they have many significant differences that make the choice of either one better suited to a particular situation or condition. Both UHaul and man-with-van are for hire services, with UHaul you hire just the truck and are required to perform all the additional work. With the man you hire the man and the van, and all the work is taken care of. With UHaul you pay a fee per unit of time plus a rate per distance, where you pay the man-with-van only for the time used. Both rely on the underlying city street grid to facilitate the transport of your stuff, with the man-with-van providing a smarter routing system through the streets than the decidedly amateur one you provide when driving the UHaul truck. The man-with-van provides information about the locale in which his node operates and himself is a local business. UHaul is a large nationwide corporation, with little local knowledge and nuance, save the state paintings that decorate it's trucks. Both networks have good prospects for the future as they facilitate needed services even if you only use either once every few years, it is nice to know they are there.