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?

(this post is also up on ThreeMinds)

Karri Ojanen