Kevin Kelly did us a great favor and wrote an essay Mark or myself should have written some months ago (if we could). According to the title of Kelly's essay, sharing is Better Than Owning.
Kevin Kelly, in case you don't know him, is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine and author of the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy. He wrote this book in 1998, and I think many copies went to the trash bin after the bubble burst a few years later. Anyway, in his latest essay Kelly spells out some basic rules of the Share Economy, as we call it.
As creations become digital they tend to become shared, ownerless goods. We can turn this around and say that in this realm of bits, property itself becomes a more social endeavor. Property may be less about title and more about usage and control. An idea can't be owned in the way gold can; in fact an idea has little value unless it is shared or used to some extent. Its value paradoxically can increase the less it is owned privately. But if no one owns it, who gains the benefit of that increase in value? In the new regime users will often assume many of the chores that owners once had to do. And so in a way, usage becomes ownership.
According to the principle of dematerialization, all goods are having their atoms infused with bits, decreasing their weight per performance, so that all material goods increasingly behave as if they were intangible services. This means that lumber, steel, chemicals, food, cars, plane flights - everything made - can also be governed by the principles of intangible goods (see the New Rules of the New Economy). As goods become disembodied, infused with slivers of mind, and packed full of bits, they will also obey the new dynamics of property. Soon enough everything manufactured will potentially become social property.
As cars become more "electronic" or digital, they will tend to be swapped and shared and used in a social way. The more we embed intelligence and smarts into clothing the more we'll treat these articles as common property. We'll share aspects of them (perhaps what they are made of, where they are, what climate they see), which means that we'll think of ourselves as sharing them. [...]
Sharing is not very different from renting. We could say that the sharing economy currently emerging from social media is really a renting economy. [...]
What Kelly calls "sharing economy" is merely the same thing that we call Share Economy for the purpose of conference motto. In fact, we had some discussions whether "sharing economy" would be the better term, but in the end we stuck with Share Economy.
It's important to note the difference between renting physical goods and digital, intangible goods. That's exactly what the music industry didn't understand for ages and still doesn't fully understand.
The downside to the traditional rental business is the "rival" nature of physical goods. Rival means that there is a zero-sum game; only one rival prevails. If I am renting your boat, no one else can. If I rent a bag to you, I cannot rent the same bag to another. To scale your rental business you have to buy more boats or bags. But of course, intangible goods and services don't work this way. They are "non-rival" which means you can rent the same movie to as many people who want to rent it this hour. Sharing intangibles scales magnificently. This ability to share on a large scale without diminishing the satisfaction of the individual renter is transformative. The total cost of use drops precipitously (shared by millions instead of one). Suddenly, ownership is not so important. Why own, when you get the same utility from renting, leasing, licensing, sharing?
But more importantly why even possess it? Why take charge of it at all if you have instant, constant, durable, full access to it? If you lived inside of the world's largest rental store, why would you own anything? If you can borrow anything you needed without possessing it, you gain the same benefits with fewer disadvantages. If this was a magic rental store, where most of the gear was stored "downstairs" in a virtual basement, then whenever you summoned an item or service it would appear at your command.
The internet is this magic rental store. [...]
Access is so superior to ownership, or possession, that it will drive the emerging intangible economy. The chief holdup to full-scale conversion from ownership to omni-access is the issue of modification and control. In traditional property regimes only owners have the right to modify or control the use of the property. The right of modification is not transferred in rental, leasing, or licensing agreements. But they are transferred in open source content and tools, which is part of their great attraction in this new realm. The ability and right to improve, personalize, or appropriate what is shared will be a key ingredient in the advance of omni-access. But as the ability to modify is squeezed from classic ownership models (think of those silly shrink-wrap warranties), ownership is degraded.
The trend is clear: access trumps possession. Access is better than ownership.
I urge everyone who is even slightly interested in this topic to read Kevin's essay.
Hat Tip: Timo Heuer
Photo: pauliepaul
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