He’s been called the postmodern Chicken Little, but it happens that the sky really is falling. Jeremy Rifkin pulls the plug on the trend away from property ownership and free public life in The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience. As usual, he’s a bit ahead of the curve–most of us aren’t fully immersed yet in the sea of leased products and packaged experiences that he sees awaiting us. Still, his eerie vision 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 who are 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
Customer Reviews
Surprisingly current:
Do you remember the dot.com revolution? Mass customization, location-based offers, intelligent e-business and all that? Much of it was, as Alan Greenspan famously said, irrational exuberance. But, some of it was true. The fact that Rifkin wrote this book in the heat of the dot.com boom (2000), and that he still got much of it right, is a testimony to his insight. As good as this book is, there is proof that he is not a perfect prognosticator. For example, he also wrote a book called The End of Work. That sure hasn’t happened for me yet.
The best parts of this book are in the middle. Toward the end of the book, his analysis of postmodernism and its relationship to the network economy is great. Some of his key points: there is a significant shift underway from products to services and that even what we understand as products today are being offered as services, there is a significant shift from a production-based capitalistic economy to a network economy, and there is a shift toward commoditizing human relationships as we are currently witnessing with the social networking sites. This is a good and amazingly current book.
not that good:
maybe it’s just that i read it in 2007 (as the date stamp of this review shows) but i already knew all of what was covered in the book. it is old news. maybe it was relevant at the time, but half the things he talked about weren’t accurate. *shrug* i found myself skipping through the book; trying to find something worth reading.
Capitalism Conquers All:
Rifkin states that the new economy is one in which cultural experiences are exchanged for money such as in tourism. He sees this development as the growth of capitalism into the cultural sphere in which cultural experiences become commercialized. He thinks that the work that we do now will be done by robots or computers in the future. The waning blue and white collar work will be replaced by opportunities in cultural work. The commodification of relationships means that people will buy the time, attention, and affection of other people.
Another feature of the new economy is that it deals in ideas and images, more than physical assets. Companies outsource the manufacturing of their product and concentrate on the design of the product only, such as with computers and cars. Companies also like to outsource manufacturing to non-union subcontractors so that they don’t have deal with unions. Cheap labor overseas manufactures the product.
The intangible asset of the new economy is the knowledge or imagination of the associates in firms such as Microsoft. This company does not own many physical assets, but its stock still is valuable because of innovativeness of its knowledge workers in coming up with priceless commercial ideas. A new way of accounting needs to be devised to measure intangible assets such as knowledge, morale, progressive leadership, and creativity of different firms. Although Rifkin is excited about the new economy, he worries that non-commercial ideas will go by the wayside in a world in which only commercialized ideas are important.
Franchisees do not have as many rights as business owners do. In fact, the supplier often controls how the business is to be run. The contract can be broken if the franchisee violates any of the rules. Franchisees pay for the business formula and the name of the business, hoping for success without the risk of ownership. Rifkin predicts that small business will become extinct and will be replaced by franchises because the new economy is based on supplier/user relationships, not ownership. The franchisee is not autonomous and therefore cannot come up with any creative ideas on how the business should be run.
What we formally owned in the past will no longer be ours in the new economy. Rifkin informs us that we don’t even own our genes because life science companies have patented them. If we want gene therapy, we will have to pay for the privilege of using their knowledge of the patent. Gene therapy may increase health care costs because of the expense of the genetic tests. We also will not own our seeds in the future because life science companies have patented the seeds that they have genetically modified. The seeds will be leased to the farmer for one growing season only. Heavy fines will be put on those who save the seeds to grow next season. Rifkin suggests that we need to revamp our anti-trusts laws for the knowledge economy so that monopolies will not control intellectual property.
The leasing of cars shows that businesses are turning to a service-based rather than a product-based economy. They seek the lifetime loyalty of the customer by establishing a relationship with him. I suppose that this will have an advantage for the customer since the supplier will seek the satisfaction of the customer over a lifetime, not wanting to betray trust. In the future, it will be assumed that products will come with long term service; if they don’t, they could be rip-offs because the seller does not wish to maintain the product over the years. Invasions of privacy may occur if such suppliers are always seeking to find out what your buying habits are. Service relationships have also helped companies save money and the environment by having a service find out a way to provide that service more cheaply and less wastefully. The relationship between PPG painting and Ford Motor Company is given as an example.
The switch to product based economy to one in which service is emphasized has come about because there is more profit in providing added long-term services for a product, rather than selling the product as a one-time event. An over-production of goods means that it is difficult to sell products as one-offs and still make money. Products that are similar also have to have services that will differentiate them from the competition. The ability to customize a product to the customers needs is now able to be done. This mass customization replaces mass production of the previous era. In the new era, products are given away as the bait that will hook the customer into a relationship with the business over the long-term.
With the commodification of relationships in the new era, customers are ones that businesses seek to control, not so much the products. Companies will increasingly seek to sell to the same customer over the lifetime many different products. The customer is the market in this sense. With new technology, companies are able to find out what the buying habits of customers are and then cater to their preferences. Controlling the customer means that the company wants to become so “embedded” into the lives of customers that they can’t live without the company. Changes to another company may become too much of a hassle, given the complexity of the commercial relationship. Corporate institutions wish to control the customer, just as they did the worker during the industrial era. They want to control economic life as opposed to having the masses control it. The purpose of capitalism is to keep increasing its power over our lives, even to the point of setting up communities of interests to help sell their services. Planned communities are also a way that corporations sell a lifestyle while abridging the ownership rights of the people who live there.
180 Degrees in one Book:
This book makes you turn 180 degrees fast! It takes all that you have learned in school about the ways of modernity and it pushes you into the global economy where experiences, ideas and relationships are valued above all else.
If you are wondering why the world has changed and how you can leverage those changes, you should take some time and read this book.
FIGHTING FOR ATTENTION IN A DEFICIT SOCIETY….:
Attention is key to communication in any society….listening, seeing and experiencing– so important to getting any message across, let alone establishing social networks and personal relationships. Rifkin is a master at spotting what is a major issue in our society– I can’t wait to read his European book…He understands trends before they hit the “Tipping Point” — a salute to him. This book belongs on every marketer’s shelf and on every student of branding and next-gen advertising and mass communications…..wonder why no one’s paying attention — Rifkin covers some of the possible answers here.
