The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where all of Life is a Paid-For Experience

A disturbing bit of prescience - this was published at the turn of the last century, and correctly pegs the effect of the information age on the economics of capitalism. Markets are secondary now to networks, property is mostly an intangible "experience" and access has replaced ownership. About the only things missed here are the overwhelming rise of online shopping and the contributions of online social networks to the destruction of culture, but other than that, this book could have been written earlier this year. Unfortunately there are no real solutions proposed here, but I suspect that's because the author was secretly hoping his speculations were wrong. Read it and weep, then worry.

Rifkin gives an insightful analysis of the shift from property ownership to the information economy and how access to information becomes evermore critical. The value of his thoughts for me have to do with his insights about how the the market, which in past societies was a off to the side, but has now become more and more the driving force shaping human culture and interaction. Access to the "market place" is now controlled by marketing interests and not by more traditional forces of religion, philosophy, politics.

Interesting book that I had to read for library school. I think Rifkin's idea that we purchase access over purchasing a product is really beginning to happen now.

8 Gennaio 2002
Jeremy Rifkin ha realizzato un'opera estremamente interessante. Finalmente, qualcuno osserva e analizza l'evoluzione del sistema capitalista con uno sguardo attento, intelligente e mai ideologico. Il libro è ricchissimo di fatti e di esempi, in alcuni punti persino in modo eccessivo. L'unico appunto che ritengo doveroso fare a questo volume è il tentativo un poco ingenuo e già obsoleto di agganciare alcune delle ipotesi proposte all'evoluzione della rete e della cosiddetta new economy. Ora che la new economy si è rivelata un bluff, certi riferimenti fanno un po' sorridere. In Internet, il concetto di ragnatela ipertestuale è ormai morto, distrutto da un'organizzazione rigorosamente business oriented dei siti web; come show more pure è quasi completamente scomparsa ogni traccia di servizio gratuito, e destinate ad un rapido declino paiono pure le tanto sbandierate comunità di utenti. Tutti questi elementi sono stati utilizzati nel volume a sostegno delle ipotesi proposte. Ma nonostante questa pecca, il volume rimane in generale valido. show less

Voici un argumentaire brillant pour ranger nos cours d'économie dans la rubrique Histoire de la pensée économique, et en reconstruire de nouveaux !