The Age of Access: How the Shift from Ownership to Access is Transforming Modern Life (Penguin Business Library) - Hardcover

Rifkin, Jeremy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0140296123 ISBN 13: 9780140296129

Publisher: Penguin, 2000

Synopsis

British consumers are now spending more on leisure activities than food. Businesses are freeing themselves of costly property and stock-holdings, as intellectual property becomes their most valuable asset. Culture is replacing industry as the maindriving force of the economy. Against this background, The Age of Access looks at how and why we are spending more and owning less. It explores the shift from markets to networks, geography to cyberspace, ownership to access relationships and industrial to cultural production. The critical question posed by Rifkin is whether civilization can survive when only the commercial sphere remains the arbiter of human life.

About this title

Review

He's been called the postmodern Chicken Licken, but it so happens that the sky really is falling down. Jeremy Rifkin pulls the plug on the trend away from property ownership and free public life in The Age of Access. As usual, he's a bit ahead of the curve--most of us aren't yet fully immersed in the sea of leased products and packaged experiences that he sees awaiting us. Still, his eerie visions of a world of gatekeepers paying each other for access to nearly every aspect of human life brings a chilling new meaning to the phrase "pay to play" and should spark some debate over our new cultural revolution. Using examples from business and government experiments with just-in-time access to goods and services and resource sharing, Rifkin defines a new society of renters too busy breaking the shackles of material possessions to mourn the passing of public property. Are we encouraging alienation or participation? Can we trust corporations with stewardship of our social lives? True to form, the author asks more questions than he answers--a sign of an open mind. If property is theft, leased access is extortion, and The Age of Access warns us of the complex changes coming in our relationships with our homes, our communities, and our world. --Rob Lightner

Synopsis

Imagine waking up one day to find that virtually everything you do has become a "paid for" experience. It is part of a fundamental change taking place in the nature of business, contends Jeremy Ritkin. After several hundred years as the organising principles of civilisation, the traditional market systems is beginning to break down. On the horizon looms the "age of access", where we trade experiences instead of objects. In the hypercapitalist economy - characterised by continuous innovation and dizzying speed of change -buying thongs in markets an downing property becomes an outdated idea, while "just in time" access to virtually every kind of service, through vast commercial networks operating in cyberspace, becomes the norm. We increasingly pay for the experience of using things -in the form of subscriptions, memberships and leases -rather than pay for the things themselves. The bottom line: we are spending more and owning less. Similarly, companies are selling off property, leasing equipment, outsourcing activities and becoming "weightless". Ownership of physical property, once considered a valued asset, is now regarded as a liability in the corporate world.

"Lifestyle marketing" is th buzz in the commercial world as more and more consumers become members of corporate sponsored clubs and participate in corporate sponsored activities and events. The business of business, therefore, is no longer about exchanging property but, rather, buying access to one's daily existence in small commercial time-segments. In this book the author asks, will any time be left for relationships of a non-commercial nature? The changes taking place are part of an even larger transformation in the nature of capitalism. we are making a long-term shift from a system based on manufacturing goods to one based on the selling of cultural experiences. Global travel and tourism, fashion, food, sport, gambling, the virtual worlds of cyberspace and even social causes, are fast becoming the centre of an experimental economy that trades in cultural resources.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0140296123
• ISBN 13: 9780140296129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320