The Airhitch® Ethos

Why Airhitch® is an ".org": The Airhitch® Ethos

[Note: this page is maintained, though collaboratively, under the exceptionally close editorial supervision of the founder of Airhitch®, Robert Segelbaum]

Once upon a time, starting back in the dawning days of the Internet, in the early 70s, there was a real difference between the .com and the .org primary domain-name. The ".com" suffix was reserved for "COMpanies" and "COMmercial operations", whereas the ".org" suffix was reserved for "ORGanizations" that were NON-commercial (like non-profit and not-for-profit organizations), entities which existed not for money-making purposes but for various charitable, social, political, and certain types of educational purposes (although accredited educational institutions had a special primary-domain suffix reserved for them: ".edu").

Airhitch® was founded by a budget unstructured exploratory traveler (commonly known emblematically as a "backpacker" -- although of course not all b.u.e.t.s necessarily always carry a backpack!) on behalf of himself and his peer travelers. The beginnings of the system were rooted in a desire to avoid and/or resist a certain mild form of oppression imposed on this particular type of traveler by the marketing practices of the air-transport industry of the time (late sixties) -- many of which continue today, although there has been some "loosening" of them.

The Airhitch® ethos is thus a fundamentally sociopolitical one, not a commercial or mercantile one, and is based on two central pillars: budget unstructured exploratory travelers, thru solidarity among us, helping each other (1) hang onto as much of our money as we can for as long as we can, while traveling; and (2) avoid restrictions placed on our freedom of movement by those providing the air transportation (which virtually always result in hidden extra charges, sometimes DISASTROUS, being discovered later!).

However, besides these two central pillars, and often as a result of them, other aspects of this ethos come into play, and can be looked at as "sub-pillars". For example, we strive to do things -- everything we do! -- in a spirit of collaboration and cooperation as opposed to competition and conflict. The whole organization is based on solidarity among budget unstructured exploratory travelers, and as such is dedicated to a collaborative, rather than competitive, "modus operandi". Though "me first" just doesn't work, around Airhitch®, "me in solidarity with others, and everybody first" works very well!

Another important aspect of the Airhitch® ethos is the high value we Airhitchers place on open communication and free and unrestricted information-flow. Except where the political dictates of the air-transport industry to which we are all beholden prevent it, we openly share among us all information relevant to the process of Airhitching; and in this connection, it is important to understand that one of our most potent tools (or "weapons"!) in our efforts to "beat the system" lies in the free and unrestricted flow of accurate and precise information -- a process in which, of course, the Internet and the cyberworld are of prime importance.

But perhaps the most important "sub-pillar" of the Airhitch® ethos is voluntarism: the notion that no Airhitcher as part of his/her participation in the Airhitch® program/process, whether as a traveler him/herself or facilitator of other people's travel, should ever be required to (or manipulated into, or even worse, coerced into!) doing anything at all. Hitchhiking is based on a total spirit of voluntary collaboration between users and maintainers of the system, people doing what they want to do and decide to do, based on what's clearly possible and in keeping with the principles of Airhitching, rather than what someone else tells them to do, and since, of course, Airhitching is hitchhiking, this spirit applies to everything Airhitch®-related!

And, related to the voluntarism sub-pillar is the permissivity sub-pillar: not only will nobody ever try to tell you what to do, when you're Airhitching or helping others Airhitch®, you can do anything you want, within the limits of logical possibility, at any time, as long as it is not destructive to yourself or to any other human being or to the Airhitch® system (and since the Airhitch® system is there for you, as well as all your peer budget-unstructured-exploratory travelers, anything destructive to Airhitch® is self-destructive!). Thus it is up to each individual Airhitcher to decide, perhaps with the advice of other Airhitchers, and especially the more experienced among us who constitute the AOS, what is permissible behavior when Airhitching and what is not.

Airhitch® website: www.airhitch.org