When we throw out physical trash, we know, at least on a subconscious level, that it often has the potential to be repurposed. Someone might rescue an abandoned book from a dumpster, or fall in love with the musical tastes of another through a discarded CD they find on the sidewalk. However, the drag-drop-delete process of deleting data from our computers prevents them from ever reaching others. Dumpster Drive makes your trash social within the context of your desktop, allowing you to dumpster dive through the discarded files of others.

Creator

Justin Blinder is a Brooklyn-based media artist, programmer, and designer. His work examines how our claims of ownership, signals and criteria for an object’s value, and ways of interacting with others have changed in the digital landscape. His projects aim to simultaneously provide usable applications and tools and a critical analytical lens, sparking dialogues on how technology and digitization shape our social behaviors.

FAQ

Is Dumpster Drive Peer 2 Peer?

Currently no. A Peer 2 Peer decentralized model is currently in development. It is hoped that in the future others will expand on the concept of data thrifting, and develop their own “Dumpster Drive” networks.

Is Dumpster Drive Open Source?

Yes. The source code is currently being cleaned up and will be hosted on GitHub.

I am running Windows/Linux. Can I use Dumpster Drive?

Dumpster Drive is currently Mac only (sorry). Please feel free to create a digital trash file-sharing network for another platform.

Dumpster Drive broke! What do I do?

For now, you can send crash’s bugs to justin [dot] blinder [at] gmail [dot] com . You can also post them over at the GitHub repository.

Is Dumpster Drive anonymous?

Yes. Dumpster Drive does not utilize user account information, nor does it log a user’s IP address.

How many users does Dumpster Drive have?

Since Dumpster Drive does not track users information, it’s difficult to tell how many active users are part of the community. However, as of November 2013, there have been over 45,000 downloads.

Disclaimer

The developer(s) of Dumpster Drive, owner(s) of dumpsterdrive.com, and registered owner(s) of the servers which power Dumpster Drive are in no way liable or responsible for the decided usage Dumpster Drive. These people or persons (or places or things) are also not responsible for files transmitted using the software. This includes copyrighted, obscene, illegal, and/or offensively banal content.